Who we are!

Who we are!

The BetterCareScotland campaign was founded and is run pro bono by people who care. We care that regulatory capture and superficial oversight processes mean that public bodies in Scotland are never held to account for decisions and practices which expose defenceless children and adults to the risk of neglect and abuse in residential care settings.

Rather refreshingly, in an increasingly virtual age, we found each other by word of mouth – and, we meet in person!

Initially, our focus was the cover-up of abuse of women in residential care homes in Scotland who are denied their rights as women by Councils and social care regulators – and, indeed, the Scottish Parliament – but our campaign widened after coming to the attention of survivors of child abuse in residential care where the risks are the same as are the incentives for public bodies to pretend they don’t exist.

We put our resources to good use by risk-mapping the experiences of service users, producing useful and compelling visual resources for those who resort to legal action against public bodies after all reasonable attempts to engage with them fail – as they are designed to do.

Increasingly, we share our Risk Management, Compliance and Data Analytics expertise with enlightened public bodies, progressive care providers in Scotland and social care regulators in other parts of the UK and throughout Europe headed by people who are unafraid to admit that they don’t have all the answers. Uniquely, but unsurprisingly, given the nature of the beast, Scotland’s Care Inspectorate refuses to engage with us.

Our academic backgrounds in pure and applied economics, econometrics, law and risk management and our professional practice in behavioural economics, economic trade-offs, real options, incentive structures and the social contract together with decades of experience on the global stage in risk management, regulation, data analytics, compliance and governance and heaps of common sense have us questioning why, in modern Scotland, the incentives of unelected Social Care bosses, regulators and Elected Members should not be perfectly-aligned with the care and welfare needs of vulnerable service users. Why public money would be used to keep the owner of a commercially unviable care home in business when his business plan exposes his vulnerable residents to risk at the hands of hard-pressed staff who are required to cut corners and bend the rules to cope. Or, why disclosures of abuse would ever be covered-up leaving others exposed to the most hideous risks, from which they are unlikely to recover, as a consequence. And, why no-one exercising power is held to account and sanctioned when things go wrong for service users.

We find that Scotland’s Care Inspectorate routinely turns up, if it turns up at all, only after the event when it is, frankly, too late when competent, professional regulators in any sector would know, using demonstrable expertise and good quality data rather than cognitively-biased opinion, where to concentrate their resources. And that the Scottish Social Services Council expects people to accept that their abuser can remain in post and SSSC-registered to do “regulated work” with “protected groups” in Scotland.

In practice, by outcome or design, Social Care regulation in Scotland today, is little more than window-dressing!

At BetterCareScotland, we self-identify as data geeks, being unable to resist the challenge of teasing answers from public bodies unused and resistant to challenge or being held to account … then extracting every piece of data from their uber-defensive responses. After 10 years, BetterCareScotland has data that Scotland’s public bodies, if they were well-incentivised, would recognise the value of and aspire to have.

Our Methods!

BetterCareScotland collects anonymised data from information supplied by our subscribers, people who give generously of their time to tell us, for the benefit of others, about their unfortunate experiences of social care provision in Scotland.

Our subscribers are, typically, those best-placed to monitor care delivery and provision but whose voices are routinely silenced when they speak out: care users, care home residents, their family members and friends, social workers, in-post and former Care Inspectorate staff, community carers and care home staff. We model our subscribers’ data together with publicly-available information which might otherwise serve no purpose.

Then, we indulge our passion for formulating and testing hypotheses!

Useful data – the stuff that Scotland’s public bodies do not collect – and its analysis – the stuff that Scotland’s public bodies cannot do – plus, the will to radically reform Scotland’s social care system so that it functions in the public interest will consign to history the dreadful mistakes we chronicle today.

Our data point, unequivocally, to vulnerable service users being at greater risk today, than ever before, of their neglect and abuse being covered-up!

Everything we do is peer reviewed!

Our mission!

At the outset, BetterCareScotland‘s aim was to deliver discussion papers to Scotland’s Parliament but, with word of our campaign spreading and our discovery that certain Councils in Scotland routinely deliver poor social care outcomes and that the managers of registered services themselves regard a disinterested Care Inspectorate as unfit for the task of regulating them or any other part of the social care sector, today we campaign on behalf of the tens-of-thousands of people being let down ultimately by the public bodies with statutory responsibility to ensure their safety and welfare.

We find that, while the postcode lottery of social care provision is sufficient justification for a specialist National Care Service administered centrally in Scotland, local ‘issues’ make the moral case for wresting control of the procurement and delivery of social care from Councils.

This should help to engender some trust in a Care Inspectorate which, they perceive and our data confirm, fails to act independently of Councils or is wilfully blind to the issues when things go badly wrong for residents in commercially-unviable care homes the owners of which are being kept in business by their local Council or for children in residential care where those who manage the service can determine the extent of family involvement.

We welcome the involvement of anyone who shares our concerns about Scotland’s current social care system and wants to see Scotland move beyond the rhetoric so that public bodies are no longer taken on trust but are held accountable and sanctioned when things go wrong. While we welcome your own involvement, we do not expect you to agree with us. Debating our differences of opinion is important.

Absolutely everyone in Scotland, at some stage, is likely to find themselves or a family member or friend in residential care. When that time comes, you should be able to find a social care system you can depend upon and not one which will expose you to risk and then stonewall you for daring to express your concerns.

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As ever, love and peace!

Disclaimer!

BetterCareScotland is an evidence-based campaign for a social care system which works in the interests of people in Scotland. We leave opinion-based decision-making to the ill-informed!

We collect, test and model verifiable data which reflect people’s lived experience of Scotland’s social care system and use our findings to challenge the operations and performance of public bodies with responsibility for social care procurement, commissioning, delivery, provision and regulation in Scotland and those with a duty to exercise oversight.

Each person has their own unique experience of social care in Scotland and, while the findings of BetterCareScotland’s empirical analyses may mirror an individual’s own experiences, they should be treated as of INFORMATIONAL USE only.

The only advice we offer free, gratis and for nothing is ‘Question everything, keep good records and take nothing on trust!’

To find out how BetterCareScotland could help you manage the risks of your operations, please email Bill via bill@bettercarescotland.org

Subscribe below! It costs nothing to be in the loop!

Love and Peace!