Social Care

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as vice-president of Hospice UK and my role with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. I will ask the Minister three short questions. Will the voluntary sector be closely involved, given that there is a £1 billion contribution to care from hospices and the voluntary sector, which looked after 212,000 patients last year, providing health and social care that otherwise would have fallen to statutory funders? Secondly, given that falls are the major cause of deterioration in the health of older people, and the lack of social care in preventing falls and in being able to take people out of hospital afterwards, will the Minister assure me that this will look at the flow through hospitals and the requirements of social care provision in an integrated way? Thirdly, while the Minister has mentioned young carers, will he specifically provide assurance that this will also look at child carers, some of whom might be at primary school age? They are often forgotten when people look at the burden on carers because they are, in a way, invisible apart from in the school sector.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I can absolutely provide that reassurance on the voluntary sector. The noble Baroness is quite right to highlight the vital role it plays—it is essential and critical to this sector. On falls, she will know just how important reducing falls is. The disabled facilities grant is increasing. It is not a well-known bit of government spending and not talked about much, but it amounts to about half a billion pounds a year. It can have a really big impact by keeping people in their homes for up to four years longer, reducing falls by 40%. It is something we have had the opportunity to discuss in this House recently. It is critical. She is quite right to focus on the frontier between health and social care and making sure that it flows and works well.

On child carers, I will write with more details about what the action plan covers, but clearly we will make sure that it looks at all carers, because a carer could be of almost any age. As she pointed out, it includes very young children as well as people in their 80s and 90s. A true carers approach would encompass all of them.