Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Greengross and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 78ZA, to which my name is also attached. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, has already spoken very eloquently of the reasons behind the amendment. Dignity and respect are absolutely fundamental pillars of well-being, which is why I would like to see these words spelt out in the Bill. Well-being is unattainable without dignity and respect as central components. In saying this, I am conscious that the public’s opinion on this matter is one of pessimism and distrust of the current social care system. In a recent survey, only 26% of the public felt confident that older people receiving social care are being treated with dignity. If the public do not trust their loved ones in the hands of the social care sector, what hope is there that well-being is being promoted?

We have recently seen and heard of shocking failures in the care of older people in both the health and social care sectors. These very harrowing examples serve to illustrate the importance of enshrining dignity and respect as a critical part of well-being in order to try to change the culture among care workers in the health and care sectors, to ensure the transformation of services that this Bill is intended to bring about and to have the sort of compassionate care that we all like to see. Dignity will also be very important when it comes to secondary legislation and specifically to the eligibility criteria. It is vital that these criteria have regard to the well-being principle. I am happy to be corrected about this if I am mistaken, but the draft feels very health-and-safety-oriented and does not mention dignity at all.

I would have liked to add my name to Amendment 79 about including well-being as part of the Secretary of State’s duty, the reasons for which have already been set out very clearly. The very wide-ranging definition of well-being, set out in The Care Bill Explained, makes it absolutely clear that for the well-being principle to be made a reality it would need to be the joint responsibility of a wide range of partner agencies, nationally and locally. Government action on key issues such as welfare, transport and housing are likely to have a very distinct impact on well-being at an individual level.

We rightly hear a lot about the importance of joining up health, social care and wider services: horizontal integration, if you like. For any system to work as it is intended and to be fully aligned it must be, as I said at Second Reading, vertically integrated as well to make sure that everyone, from the Secretary of State downwards, has the same objectives and is pulling in the same direction.

[Baroness Greengross]

My Lords, I support Amendment 78ZA. Six years of serving on the Equality and Human Rights Commission taught me that if we embedded dignity and respect into the training of staff we would avoid many of the tragedies we have read about. This applies, right across the board, to staff in health, social care and housing. It is essential that we take dignity and respect as very serious elements of the training of all staff who come into contact with frail and vulnerable people.