Carers Act funding: letter to Councillor Paul Kelly

To: Councillor Paul Kelly, COSLA Spokesperson for Health and Social Care
From: Maree Todd MSP, Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport

Now that the Scottish Budget for 2025-26 has been approved by the Scottish Parliament and while Local Authorities and Integration Authorities are making local budget decisions for 2025-26, I am writing to highlight the importance of local carer support funding (The Scottish Government’s National Carers Strategy (2022) includes a commitment to ‘continue to encourage authorities to spend their full share of Carers Act funding on expanding carer support’) in line with commitments in the National Carers Strategy.

As noted in my letter to you last February, I know that you and local colleagues are well aware of the immense contribution unpaid carers make to the health and social care system as well as to the people they care for. As feedback on the ongoing pressures on local carer centres and the value of the support that they provide is consistent with that letter, I will not reiterate it here.

I fully recognise the challenging financial context for Local Authorities and Integration Authorities, including with the forthcoming UK Government increase in employer National Insurance Contributions (eNICS) for their own staff, so am pleased that there is some provision for that in the budget. I know that, in addition to other inflationary and demand pressures, local carer support organisations are concerned about the impact of eNICS on their costs. I welcome COSLA having joined forces with the Scottish Government in making the case to the UK Government over funding to address this issue for commissioned services.

It therefore feels all the more important to ask for your support in ensuring that Local Authorities and Integration Authorities are sighted on the Carers Act funding set out in my previous letter (£88.4m per year plus a share of social care uplifts since 2022-23) and in encouraging them to ensure these resources are allocated in full to providing support for unpaid carers, including young carers.

Alongside that, I am pleased to highlight the additional £5m for short breaks in the budget for 2025-26, which will bring our total voluntary sector short breaks fund to £13m per year. I expect to allocate a significant proportion of this increase to Time to Live short break support, mainly delivered by local carer centres.

I also welcome the work of your officials in encouraging transparency in local spending on carer support, in line with Integration Authorities’ responsibilities to publish Annual Performance Reports. However, I am clear that more needs to be done to improve transparency of how funding for social care is spent. Although we will no longer legislate for Ministers to have powers to directly fund Integration Authorities as part of the National Care Service Bill, I will consider what changes can be made to guidance and reporting processes to improve financial transparency and I am committed to working constructively with COSLA to achieve this.

I have no doubt that this issue, and the others outlined above, will be discussed in our forthcoming meeting with local carer centre representatives. I look forward to that discussion and exploring what more we can do together to improve the situation for this important sector.

In the meantime, I would be grateful if you would share the information in this letter with local decision-makers.

Carers Act funding: letter to Councillor Paul Kelly

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