YOU could be forgiven for thinking the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill lays out a vision for a national care service in Scotland. You would be wrong.

It is a “framework” Bill. That means it gives no detail at all about what a national care service would look like, but if passed, would enable Scottish ministers to decide that without proper parliamentary scrutiny. It promises “co-design” but does not commit to listening or acting on what comes out of that.

Essentially it asks us to trust ministers to design a service that will meet the needs of staff and service users alike, leaving our members in social work and social care hostages to fortune.

This Bill opens the door wide to the privatisation and outsourcing of social care and social work services, including children’s services and criminal justice. These services were brought in late to the party, with no consultation and little clarity about how services will be delivered.

There is no detail at all about where the responsibility will rest for ensuring their statutory functions are fulfilled or how the employment rights of staff, including their pension rights, will be protected.

Now don’t get me wrong, Unison supports the creation of a national care service. But our vision is of a service that gives social care and the people that provide it the status they deserve.

That’s why Unison has joined other well-regarded organisations in Scotland in calling for the Bill to be withdrawn, and why our Scottish council of branches will be asked to back our campaign and to demand a proper process of engagement to design the service from the bottom up.

Social work is already in crisis. Years of underfunding have left social work in a perilous state, with difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff. Social Work Scotland found that one in four social workers will not make it beyond six years in the job.

Morale is very low, with workers telling us that they are struggling to provide services after years of cuts and are working huge amounts of unpaid overtime just to keep their heads above water. In their approach to the Bill, there is very little evidence that the ministers understand or value the role of social work.

In Unison’s consultation on the Bill, one member stated: “Practice doesn’t improve because a minister tells us to do so. It improves when staff feel there is a genuine interest and concern about their role — when they aren’t doing the work of three people because cuts and lack of staff have made it that way.”

Unison has been pressing for major investment in front-line social work services to address the increased demand and real-term cuts, to enable our social work members to practice in a relationship and strength-based way, and to support the recruitment and retention of staff.

However, there is nothing in this Bill that will address the underfunding of social work and social care. It is sorely lacking in financial information. And what information there is has been comprehensively rubbished by every bookkeeper in the country in their responses to the Bill.

The lack of certainty around pensions will add to the current retention crisis. Unison’s survey has shown that large numbers of the workforce are looking to retire early as it is. Threats to pensions are going to intensify the staffing crisis, not resolve it.

However, Unison’s concerns about the Bill go beyond its potential impact on social work and social care members. The Bill creates the potential for 75,000 council workers and an unknown number of NHS workers to be moved out of councils.

This would devastate local government. Not only would all social work and social care be transferred to care boards, under the purview of ministers, but any such transfer would impact hugely on a wide range of council staff in HR, payroll and other support functions.

The council will only remain the employer of social work and social care services if it successfully tenders to provide them — a process it will require to repeat at regular intervals, giving staff no certainty and leaving lines of statutory accountability dangerously unclear.

We are promised that even if the Bill is approved, a process of consultation and co-design would then ensue. However, this is entirely non-binding on the government and it can completely ignore it — as it is doing with much of the criticisms in the responses to the Bill. We can have no confidence in the process.

Unison has called for any national care service to kick profit out of care — this Bill threatens to do the opposite. We want a care service built around nationally agreed standards, employment conditions and resourcing, but delivered locally by councils and not-for-profit organisations working in partnership.

Our members in social work want a process that will explore all aspects of the challenges facing social work, creating a shared vision of the purpose and value base of social work and care in the context of stronger communities.

If the Scottish government wanted genuine engagement, consultation and co-design, it would have started with that — and not with this top-down Bill which will institutionalise insecurity, when post-Covid, what social work and social care need is stability and decent funding.

Kate Ramsden is a member of Scotland’s Social Work Issues Group and the Unison NEC.