Of misplaced trust. Of bureaucracy & cover-up. Of a social care system paying lip service to the needs of Scotland’s most vulnerable.
Extract III: caught in the Council’s social care web
My heart sank on seeing myself back where I was three years ago, listening to a social worker bent on persuading me to agree to something I would come to regret … but, this time around, knowing I was being deceived. After the phone call, we checked the diary and found that it was three years to the very day since the previous social worker pulled the self-same stunt, one that saved her employer, the local Council, an amount of around fourteen thousand pounds at my expense for it deprived me for seventeen months of my entitlement to Free Personal Care. And, here was the new social worker, making contact for the first time, intent on deceiving me the same way.
Free Personal Care in Scotland is a social care benefit to which people, aged sixty-five or over and assessed as being in need, are entitled, irrespective of means. In my own case, three years ago I was in my hundredth year and had moved in with my son after being abused in a care home for older people. My own home had been sold to pay for my residential care. And, with only the last vestiges of the proceeds of the sale of my home left to me and a small pension for a rainy day – an increasingly more frequent event you will discover if you reach my age – the local Council had resolved to impoverish me completely.
I looked at my son in disbelief. “To the very day!”, I said, knowing that this aspect of the matter was of no real significance but, somehow, it encapsulated my sense of outrage.
“It’s a scam!”, my son said, summing it up perfectly. “You’ll remember we worked out that the previous social worker had pulled a fast one when the Council blamed us for what she’d done. This latest attempt shows it to be a scam, I have absolutely no doubt!”
“A scam!”, I repeated, nodding as if I were deliberating on the meaning of the whole thing, its implications and all it entailed. “But, it’s so simple! Too simple!”, I said. “How on earth were we taken in the last time!”
My son was frowning. He’s a level-headed economist with a reputation for making sense of raw data but – while I have no trouble stating that I hate cheats, period – he has his Buddhist beliefs to consider. He got up and made tea. I switched on the radio. The anti-Fascist message of Shostakovich Seven that was playing on Radio 3 was lost on neither of us.
Over tea, my son explained that some of the most successful scams are unsophisticated but, for people to be taken in by them, scammers need to appear, not just plausible but, genuine. He said that social workers who abuse their position won’t typically face such hurdles as they expect to be and are taken on trust which makes their crimes especially egregious. But, what bothered him about the telephone call today was that it was made by a social worker determined to shaft me without any of the usual foreplay. “That’s a measure of the Council’s cynicism!”, he said. “There wasn’t even the slightest pretence at common courtesy.” As my son spoke, had I been less superstitious, I would have cursed her, yet another who was willing to exploit the fears and anxieties of people like me.
“The fact that your new social worker has just tried to pull the same stunt means there’s a systematic aspect to this scam, that it’s a well-worn as it’s worked in the past and that you or, rather, we are seen as an easy target. Since they know there’s nothing to lose, they’ll miss no opportunity to perpetrate these sorts of scams.”
“Oh dear! Easy targets! Does this new social worker really think we’ll fall for it again?”, I asked. I felt uneasy about Council’s staff having me in their sights.
“It’s likely she won’t know you’ve already been scammed. From what I’ve seen, the Council’s records don’t reflect the facts. They’re more a work of fiction.”
“The effort the last social worker went to!”, I reflected, “All those visits when I had better things to do than listen to her waffle on about her parterre. Leading me to believe she cared! Does she never stop and think of the harm she causes!”
“Do you remember, we used to think her ineffectual at best or lazy at worst?”
“But, it turns out that she’s nothing short of a psychopath!” My son looked intently at me. I could see he agreed. “Only a psychopath would gain someone’s trust only to take advantage and then lie about it to cover their own back!”
“It’s a blessed relief she’s no longer your social worker. And, that we know now to question absolutely everything this latest social worker says! She won’t be happy about being challenged!”
“Good!”, I said. “Good!”
To my relief, listening to my son, I realised that I no longer harboured doubts about involving him in this hideous business, pitted against people who do not share our values. I could see why the Council chief executive was so desperate to get him off her back. But, being dismissed, ridiculed, blamed, threatened, ignored, even threatened by her staff told us she had things to hide. And, strengthened our resolve.
“So, our emails to the chief executive about the last social worker depriving me of my Free Personal Care allowance won’t be on my file!”
“If they’re anywhere in the Council’s records, they’ll be buried. They won’t be flagged. The chief executive took care to do no more than acknowledge our emails. But I made sure to copy her into absolutely everything so that she can’t claim to know nothing. Today’s phone call might end up resurrecting the whole matter!”
“I fail to see why the Council needs a chief executive to do a job a robot could do! I’d know where I was with a robot!”
We laughed!
“The most primitive robot circa 1976 at that!”, my son agreed! “Just think of all the social care that could be funded from what the Council would save on her salary and fat pension!”
“You’ve become almost as cynical as your old mum!”, I said. “I’m lucky to have you on my side. I dread to think what might happen otherwise!”
When I suggested that the chief executive would respond differently if it were her mother being scammed by the Council, my son squeezed my hand.
“Your fists are clenched!”, he said. “Is it safe for me to sit so close?”
I agreed to put the whole matter to the back of my mind and leave it to my son to send a friendly email to the new social worker outlining our understanding of today’s telephone conversation, taking care to avoid alerting her to our concerns for, this time we needed hard evidence of the Council’s cynical intent.
We could not have known how that seemingly innocuous email would be received!
BetterCareScotland finds local authority chief executives making no attempt to see serious complaints investigated fully and resolved properly and, instead, employing staff for the express purpose of gaslighting and deflecting those who complain so as to ensure that the authority’s operations escape scrutiny – even if, as here, the complaint in question exposes a clear conflict of interest with a social worker’s deception saving the local authority a great deal of money at the expense of a service user and could indicate fraudulent activity by a rogue social worker if such activities are not, in fact, sanctioned by the authority.
Those of our subscribers with direct experience of what they have come to characterise as scams, designed by local authorities to deprive them or their family members or friends of social care funding they desperately need, report that the more serious the nature of a complaint, the less interest the local authority chief executive will show, that the staff who investigate complaints will typically be those complained-of, which creates another conflict of interest if this deters people from complaining, that staff will curtail all correspondence when they, invariably, fail to “find evidence” to support the complaint. It is, of course, naive for any local authority chief executive to imagine that, when things go wrong, the authority can systematically rely on such a defence of its failure to keep proper records.
BetterCareScotland would advise people to keep a simple log of all telephone calls and visits from social care staff. Even better, ask your social worker for their personal email address and follow-up every meeting or communication with an email outlining for the record your understanding of what was discussed. Do not be deterred when they fail to reply.
Service-users and their family members and friends should never find themselves having to second guess local authority staff or question their incentives, but our subscriber’s experiences of dysfunctional social care departments and a culture of cover-up when things go wrong suggest that the days of taking on trust your local authority in Scotland are long gone.
Extract III: caught in the Council’s social care web, shows that family members may be as vulnerable to scams perpetrated by local authority staff as the service users themselves when the relationship is based on trust. In properly-regulated sectors, like banking and finance, every imaginable safeguard has been put in place to protect consumers. Not so in social care delivery in Scotland where local authority chief executives are neither held accountable nor sanctioned when things go wrong. This creates no incentive to get things right or to disclose the true state of the authority’s operations.
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