Baroness Pitkeathley
To ask His Majesty’s Government how they intend to ensure that the Cross-Government Carers Action Plan achieves lasting change for unpaid carers and their families.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Hyde of Bemerton) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government want the action plan to deliver lasting change for unpaid carers and their families. We will publish annual progress updates, meet annually with unpaid carers to hear their experiences, and refresh the plan to maintain momentum and accountability. In addition, the unpaid carers champion will drive progress and work with carers organisations. The cross-government ministerial group, chaired by Minister McGovern, will provide quarterly oversight supported by regular official level co-ordination.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that reply. It is a great pleasure to welcome her to the Dispatch Box on her first outing. These initiatives for carers are hugely welcome, of course, but co-ordination is going to be of great importance. Can the Minister say a little more about how the unpaid carers champion, which is a wonderful new initiative, will be involved with overseeing or delivering the carers action plan, and how that in turn will link with the work being done by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and her commission?
Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)
Until May this year, I was the executive member for health and adult social care at Islington Council, and I regularly met with unpaid carers and supported the carers’ hub there. This gave me first-hand experience of the absolutely incredible people who are unpaid carers. I want to use this opportunity to express the Government’s gratitude to all those unpaid carers who provide that vital support to family, friends and neighbours.
To return to the noble Baroness’s question, the champion will build on commitments in the Government’s unpaid carers’ action plan and enable efforts to improve the identification and support of unpaid carers. Work is under way to establish the role, including how it will complement existing activity across government and that crucial wider adult social care reform.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, first, I welcome the Minister to her place. However, will the Government commit to a statutory guarantee so that unpaid carers have access to regular, reliable respite care, rather than support being dependent on reaching a point of crisis or on where someone happens to live?
Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for the welcome. Local authorities already have duties under the Care Act to assess carers’ needs and meet eligible needs, while the better care fund can support respite, short breaks and provide peer support. However, funding and duties must result in meaningful support on the ground, so we will continue to examine how effectively existing arrangements are working and consider whether further action is required to enable more support. We recognise the importance of unpaid carers receiving high-quality support wherever they live in the United Kingdom.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, there are 15,000 schoolchildren caring for parents and siblings for over 50 hours a week, and of those 3,000 are between the ages of five and nine. Those young carers are most at risk of missing school, being suspended and underachieving, and they are not identified for three years, on average. Will the action plan mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, enable those young carers to be identified much earlier, so they get the help and support they deserve?
Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his work in this area, and I appreciate his raising this very important point. The carers action plan has a whole section on children and young carers, and the action plan overall is split into three sections, the first of which is: recognise. To the noble Lord’s point, we understand how easy it is for children and young people, in particular, to go under the radar. A cross-ministerial group will be working on this, including Minister Waugh, who is responsible for early education years, and Minister McGovern, as well as colleagues from DWP and the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade.
Recognition of carers, whichever part of the life phase they are in, is profoundly important, and we recognise that young carers make a particular contribution. As the noble Lord said, the consideration of children, particularly those aged five to nine—which is incredibly young—raises a different range of concerns, which we wish to respond to. We recognise that children and young people should not be expected to undertake excessive or inappropriate caring responsibilities, which can really affect their educational prospects, as the noble Lord said. It is important that the whole family can access the right support at the right time.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, almost 90,000 of these young carers have been identified, but over half of schools have not reported any young carers, which is particularly worrying. What powers will the champion have to make sure that local authorities are providing support and putting identification processes in place for these young people, and that that support is not only during their period of caring but extends into a period of bereavement, when they are looking after seriously ill parents or siblings?
Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)
This Government are committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity for all young people, including young carers, and every young carer is entitled to an assessment to ensure they receive the support they need. Local authorities have that duty of care, and we fully support the “No Wrong Doors for Young Carers” memorandum of understanding, which promotes stronger joint working between adult and children’s care services.
The role of the champion and exactly how that will dovetail with existing work and departments is still being worked out. The appointment will be announced in due course, and at that time we will also announce how that will integrate with ongoing work. I also draw the noble Baroness’s attention to the cross-departmental small ministerial working group, which will be looking at this issue. The inclusion of Minister Waugh, as the early education Minister, is crucial to ensuring that all schools in every local authority are doing all they can to support young carers and children bereaved at an early age.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, rightly highlighted co-ordination. If NHS England is to be abolished in 2027, does that not create an issue in ensuring clear accountability for the delivery of this incredibly important cross-government carers action plan?
Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)
I would have thought the opposite was true. The whole reason why the Government have agreed to the abolition of NHSE is to increase direct ministerial accountability within the Department of Health and Social Care, as previously mentioned in other answers—and, in this case, the DWP, DBIST and DfE.
Baroness Keeley (Lab)
My Lords, I tried a number of times in the other place to bring forward a Bill on the identification of carers, because GPs and other health professionals can be inconsistent in identifying them. As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Young, young carers are the most hidden group of carers. It is good to see that the Government’s first priority in the action plan is to improve identification and recognition of unpaid carers, but I urge my noble friend and Health Ministers to make urgent progress on this priority, because it is the vital first step in improving the support we give to unpaid carers.
Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)
My noble friend makes a very important point. “Recognise”, “refer” and “reach” are the three orders of priority, and “recognise” is obviously the first piece of the puzzle. Whatever your age and life stage, you can be referred to the appropriate support; then, “reach” is about enabling people with unpaid caring responsibilities to reach their potential, whether they wish to be in work or in education—whatever is appropriate for that person. As my noble friend knows, when you become a carer the rest of your life does not just stop overnight; often, these things are incremental. For many, what begins as helping a loved one out is suddenly hours and hours a week of providing unpaid care.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, the action plan contains a welcome commitment to exploring modernising the carer’s allowance, and it includes the possibility of replacing the earnings cliff edge with a taper. When will this work move beyond initial scoping, and when will we hear substantive proposals?
Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her work in this area and for her question. As noble Lords will know, this Government have already increased the carer’s allowance and increased the amount of earnings allowance. We are working on this as a commitment; it is a priority for the Prime Minister to support unpaid carers. I will write to the noble Baroness with more information about a taper and a timeline.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister to her new role; she brings great experience in adult social care from the London Borough of Islington. She will know that many carers are struggling with family and friends who are suffering from vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s and that often, once a patient receives a diagnosis, there is no real action plan in place to look after those people or an action plan going forward. There are only so many “Admiral” nurses, for instance, in the country and the network is limited. On that basis, will the Minister make sure that dementia and the care for dementia patients over the medium term is taken into account in this carer’s action plan, because it is an increasingly pressing problem locally up and down the country?
Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)
Indeed; the noble Lord raises a really important point. As I am sure he is aware, we have committed to the announcement of a dementia tsar starting in December. The joy of the unpaid carers champion role is that it enables us to ensure the weaving in of all these important threads—because unpaid caring is such a diverse role—so that nobody is neglected or left behind, and every carer feels seen and is able to navigate what can be quite a fragmented system.