Since 2016, decision-making for community health and social care services in Glasgow has sat with a body called the Glasgow City Integration Joint Board (IJB).

Half of the board’s members are elected councillors and half are health board representatives.

It has an annual net spend of some £1.6 billion and oversees a huge range of services, from homelessness, drugs and alcohol, community mental health, sexual health, children’s services and social care.

But I think it is fair to say, that because it is semi-detached from the cut-and-thrust of the council, its work gets less profile and attention.

That shouldn’t be the case.

This week the IJB met to consider proposals to save £3 million from adult social care by looking at how it allocates support to people with assessed care needs.

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The Glasgow Disability Alliance has spoken out against these planned changes. They are right to do so.

They will, potentially, mean quite profound changes for disabled people in Glasgow.

People who can currently live in their own homes by accessing self-directed support packages could see those cut if an equivalent level of support can be provided in a care home or other residential setting.

Those who can afford to top-up their care could continue to live independently, but those without the means to do so would have to accept less care or be forced to move into residential services.

At the other end of the spectrum, more people with lower levels of assessed needs will be directed to already-stretched community and third-sector services or self-help, going against the principles of early intervention and prevention and increasing unmet needs.

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These choices are being forced on the IJB because of the severe financial constraints it faces – so-called ‘flat cash’ settlements are nothing of the sort when faced with the effects of inflation and ever-growing demand.

The IJB itself has no means to raise its own funds. It has to accept what it is given by the Council and the Health Board, and the Scottish Government effectively ringfences the Council’s share, so in developing budget proposals officers have to make the best job they see fit with the resources they have available.

There are some things which are the yardstick of a society and how it treats those people in greatest need of support should be chief among those.

We must put human rights and dignity at the heart of how we deliver social care services – and when these things are undermined because of political decisions made elsewhere and forced onto the IJB, we need to be much more vocal in demanding more from governments and funding partners.

Immediately, Glasgow City Council needs to explain why it is withholding around £5m that has come from consequentials on English social care spending, which could remove the need for these harmful cuts.

Longer term, both the UK and Scottish Governments need to face up to the scale of the investment needed in social care and the impact that their austerity policies will have on those in our communities with the greatest need.