Creating a caring Scotland

The undervaluation of care is perhaps the clearest example, and therefore our current focus.

Millions of us, across Scotland, the UK and globally, provide paid and unpaid care, and undertake unpaid domestic work in the home, that is vital for the wellbeing of our families and for societies. It’s also essential for our economies to function.

Lack of recognition means there's not enough practical and financial support for unpaid carers and parents. It means low pay and poor working conditions for care workers. It means over-stretched and under-funded childcare and adult care services.

Carers, and those experiencing care, are often left to pay the highest price. Many face deep financial hardship and poverty, as well as great physical and emotional stress.

This invisible network of mostly women, whose compassion to care is systemically taken for granted, is often taken for granted by society and exploited by a world built on inequality.

But it doesn't have to be this way. That’s why, here in Scotland, we’re pushing policymakers to make better choices that recognise the true value that care brings to all of our lives, as part of efforts to better value all work done by women.

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when people and many politicians took to their doorsteps to ‘clap for carers’ and other key workers, we launched the A Scotland That Cares campaign. Along with our partners and carers across Scotland, we wanted to turn the compassion being showed towards carers into concrete action.

When we’d looked at the Scottish Government’s 11 National Outcomes – the goals which Ministers say add up to the sort of country they are trying to create and which are meant to drive policy and spending action nationally and locally – none were focused on care.

It was a glaring omission and the campaign for a dedicated new, National Outcome on Care began. Support for A Scotland That Cares grew, with over 70 organisations echoing the call for everyone who provides care to be put at the centre of the Scottish Government’s vision for the country.

In April 2024, Ministers backed our call, which – if finalised – will put Scotland amongst the first countries in the world to make such an explicit commitment to carers.

While symbolically important, we know the new National Outcome won’t be a silver bullet. It must be followed by the practical policies, adequate funding, and meaningful support systems that make a tangible difference to the daily lives of carers.

Right now, our entire economy fails to adequately value the work mainly done by women, particularly unpaid care and domestic work. That needs to change.

Scotland’s National Outcomes can be an important piece in this puzzle. That’s why we’re also campaigning to boost their status in policy and spending decision-making.

To help achieve this, we’re calling for the Scottish Government to introduce its promised Wellbeing and Sustainable Development Bill and use it to strengthen the legal duties on Ministers, public bodies and local authorities to deliver the National Outcomes.

This Bill would also require them to consider not just the immediate impact of every action, every policy, and every plan but also the long-term health of our planet and the wellbeing of all people, both here in Scotland and across the globe, now and in the future.

Turning this proposed Bill into law isn’t just important; it’s essential. Once finalised, it would ensure the National Outcomes become our roadmap to a fairer more prosperous economy, not just for us, but for our children, our grandchildren, and beyond.

We know that a range of organisations are working to drive change in Scotland, and we’ve partnered with several of them to learn and push for change together.

We’ve supported One Parent Families Scotland to explore how women looking after children can be better supported to access paid employment, if they want it.

We work with Carers Scotland, including during the annual Carer’s Week, to improve support for unpaid carers. We’re also supporting the Minority Ethnic Carers of People Project(MECOPP) to explore the experiences of unpaid carers from ethnic minority communities.

We’ve funded the Scottish Women’s Budget Group to explore the investment needed for a truly transformative social care system in Scotland, one in which paid care workers are properly valued, and in which everyone can access the care they need. We’ve also funded the Group to explore how to improve childcare in Scotland

We’ve also funded the WiSE Centre for Economic Justice to explore barriers to better sharing household care and domestic work between men and women.

And because women’s poverty is so closely linked to child poverty, we’re members of the End Child Poverty Campaign in Scotland, pushing for action to boost the incomes of low-income families through better social security and access to better paid employment.

We’re also working with academics at the University of the West of Scotland as part of the UWS-Oxfam Partnership to build our knowledge about the experiences and priorities of carers of different types, including young carers, those from ethnic backgrounds carers, and mothers working in non-traditional forms of work.