The blog below is written by Jen Wallace from the University of Stirling. Jen has worked for over twenty years in the public and voluntary sector as a policy analyst. She specialises in working with stakeholders across professional boundaries to achieve sustainable change. She is best known for her work on societal wellbeing and for her programme of activities introducing the value of radical kindness into public service narratives.
Social care affects almost everyone at some point in their lives. It supports disabled people, people who are older, their families, and Scotland’s communities more widely. It helps lots of people with their everyday life. Yet opinion polls underestimate its importance.
This is often interpreted as public indifference. Our work suggests a different explanation.
Social care is a hidden-but-important issue. People tend to engage with it at a personal level, rather than in abstract debate. The social care system is complicated, which makes it hard to explain and hard to understand. Social care is often hidden away within discussion on wider issues: health, benefits, taxation. As a result, opinion polling provides a very partial guide to the value that Scotland’s public really place on social care. Low salience can reflect public uncertainty, rather than lack of concern or lack of permission for political change to improve social care.
This distinction matters in an election context. Elections are one of the few moments when politicians are expected to explain how systems work, not just what they will deliver. They create space for values-based discussion about how government should support activities and services that improve everyday life for people, and about the kind of society Scotland wants to be. For ‘hidden’ issues like social care, this is a great opportunity.
Our new briefing draws on 18 months of work by a collaboration based at the University of Stirling, bringing together lived experience, practice, policy and evidence to improve how social care is understood and discussed in Scotland. The work is supported by the Rayne Foundation and Improving Adult Care Together (IMPACT), and focuses on building legitimacy for long-term political action by strengthening public understanding of adult social care.
Our briefing, Social Care, Public Opinion and Elections, argues that campaigners and policymakers should not treat low salience as a signal to avoid the issue. Instead, election periods should be used to invest in explanation and sense-making, build collective public support for improving the reality of social care.
The briefing sets out practical implications for those shaping public narratives in the run-up to the 2026 Scottish Parliament election. These include:
Using campaigns to explain, not just promise: Clear explanation of what social care is, why it matters, and how it supports everyday life for masses of people strengthens informed public debate.
Being disciplined about crisis language: While crisis narratives can attract attention, they can also make problems feel insurmountable. Credible, understandable solutions are more persuasive.
Treating public understanding as an outcome in its own right: If people leave the election period with a clearer sense of social care and its role in a good society, that is progress, even if it does not immediately register in polling.
Using lived experience to illuminate systems: Personal stories are most effective when they connect individual experience to the wider system and society, rather than reinforcing ideas of social care as something that happens only to “other” people.
This is not about moving ahead of the public. It is about supporting the public to engage meaningfully with a complex and essential system, and creating public permission for sustained political leadership to improve social care.
Over the election period, we will be producing practical, accessible briefings to support those shaping public narratives to explain social care more clearly, avoid common communication traps, and strengthen public understanding over time.
You can read more about our work at www.reframingcare.stir.ac.uk.
