Carers Action Plan 2018-20: Supporting Carers Today

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the contribution of the noble Earl and I congratulate my noble friend Lady Redfern on bringing this important debate to the Floor of the House. I welcome the action plan, but like others, I agree that it has been described as a bridge because that is what it is: a bridge. It is what happens when we have crossed over that bridge, and the scene which unfolds before us, that will be the test of whether some of the challenges faced by carers have been met universally and across the piece.

Something that strikes one about the services available to, and support for, carers is the fact that it is inevitably patchy. In certain parts of the country, with certain types of caring needs, real progress has been made. However, provision in other parts of the country either does not exist at all or sometimes, even worse, for one reason or another the most bureaucratic barriers seem to have been put up.

I am sure that other Members will sense my frustration; I am sure that they have all experienced this. You often wonder why people always feel that they have to reinvent the wheel. Why do they not go to where they can see that service being delivered and that support being given, and bring it forward so that not everybody has to feel that they are starting from zero? Surely there is a role for not only the statutory services but government and local authorities to cascade best practice down, right the way through the system.

I should have drawn attention to my interests in the register, but I want to focus on a narrow issue. Like other Members, I want to pay tribute to the support given by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, to the important service of caring for people. I remember attending a carers’ meeting, which she oversaw, when I was first elected in another place. She asked me to do something. I said that I was happy to do so, and she said that it was because I was a carer. That was the first time that I recognised that I was a carer. For many people, something happens in their lives; they accept the responsibility and do their best, but they never quite realise that they are a carer. The way of life that you had changes for you and the person you care for. I guess that is life, but that support is essential.

Many years ago, probably in the 1990s after carers’ assessments were brought in, I used to receive an assessment regularly. In the end, I am afraid, I used to just write on it in very large letters and send it back in the envelope. If the needs of the person that I care for were met, my needs as a carer would be much reduced. I want to touch on that aspect of care being implemented and providing the service for the person you care for.

Action 1.15, on page 14 of the action plan, goes into quite a lot of detail, which I welcome. It talks about,

“legal rights for personal health budgets and integrated personal budgets”,

as well as the rights of people who are already in receipt of direct payments. I have been a great advocate and supporter of this issue; I still am. If the Government intend to expand rights, giving authority to the person in receipt of services so that they have more say and more choice and manage their funding, that is fine. I fully agree, but there is a real problem, which I can see expanding, not retracting.

Noble Lords may be surprised to know that in the last two or three months, I have had conversations in this House with three Peers, two of whom are carers. One is quite capable of self-advocating and provides the services that they need for their care, but in one case we are talking about somebody caring for somebody who cannot self-advocate and is certainly a vulnerable person. In all three cases, they have been unable to identify a service or person that can provide that care, to such an extent that they have almost felt like advertising on the internet—that is, putting up an open advertisement for somebody to come and provide an essential service. The local authority could not assist them in finding the right service or person and they had tried every avenue and could not do so.

With all due respect to Members of this House, most of us know our way round the system. If we, as carers, cannot find those services, what hope is there for people who are not so familiar with social services, the benefits system and dealing with agencies? It is a problem. As we expand direct payments and personal budgets, more people will find that they are on their own, trying to purchase the very services that are essential—even when there is funding behind it. That is a real worry. I say to my noble friend the Minister: I hope, as these various surveys encapsulated in the action plan and the action plan rollout and we cross the bridge, that the Government will look at the very real practicalities on the ground that carers face every day. Carers who cannot help the person they are caring for get the essential services that person needs will themselves start to feel the very real pressure and stress of the caring role.

Another area associated with self-funding and direct payments is on the quasi-legal side. For example, if you have to go out on the open market to purchase a service for somebody and you end up making a one-to-one contract with an individual rather than going through social services or through agencies that would have carried out certain legal functions, there are things such as Criminal Records Bureau checks. How does the individual carer approach that challenge? Do all carers know what is appropriate in applying for a lasting power of attorney and what it means when they are named on the lasting power of attorney? They need advice and it needs to be timely, but who will take responsibility for making sure that those people carrying out this function get that advice at the right time?

I say to the Minister: yes, please let us have direct payments and independent budgets, but that is not an excuse for psychologically saying, “You’re on your own now—get on with it; we’ve got other things to do”. As the Minister will know only too well, a word we bandy about in this House quite often in debates is “safeguarding”. It is as much a responsibility of a local authority to ensure that there is proper safeguarding for people managing their own affairs as it is for them to look at safeguarding people in residential homes. This is the detail of what happens on the ground. All too often when legislation comes in, this House and the other place never get to see how the detail is being implemented. We never get feedback until things start to go wrong and we start hearing that it is not working or that there are real problems. It is time, particularly for a House that prides itself on its scrutiny, to scrutinise the real detail of how this will work out.

On informal carers, the action plan talks a lot about volunteers. That is an excellent idea, but again, who are these volunteers? How will the carer know, when they invite a volunteer to look after a vulnerable loved one, just what their background is? The Minister must give attention to those sorts of details.