Charitable Sector

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Tuesday 5th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheeler]

My Lords, since being introduced to the House in July, I have had the privilege of spending time in this Chamber listening to debates and observing to my great relief the supportive way in which the House conducts its business, welcomes its new Members and shows respect and tolerance for all, or most, contributions.

I want to echo noble Lords who have made their maiden speeches by expressing my thanks and appreciation for the support, kindness and help that I have received from the House of Lords staff—particularly the very patient Doorkeepers and assistants who have helped me and made considerable efforts to help me try to negotiate my way around the House’s twisting corridors and passages. When I explain to you that I was once out fell walking in the Lake District and asked directions to a mountain I was actually sitting on, you can understand why I need all the support I can get.

I begin my service in this House in the full recognition of the privilege of being here and that this would not have been possible without the support, opportunity and experience I have had during 40 years of work and involvement in politics, trade unions and the voluntary sector. I began working for UNISON, the public services union, in 1993 when it merged into the UK’s largest union. Before that I worked for a much smaller specialist healthcare union COHSE. Until I recently retired, I was director of organisation development, heading up strategic HR management, planning and major systems change and management programmes. We were the first UK union to be awarded the Investors in People standard and to introduce an equality-proofed pay and grading system for our staff—practising ourselves what we want to see for our members in the workplace. UNISON is a remarkable union bringing together members from across the public services and energy industries—nurses, town hall clerks, engineers, school meals staff, teaching assistants, social and care workers, and more than 60,000 community and voluntary staff in a sector that is notoriously difficult to organise.

I make just one more reference to my background. I have been active in local community politics for years, but many of my noble friends on this side of the House will know me through my role as the intrepid chair of the Labour Party's Conference Arrangements Committee. This is a small committee, but has a major role and impact on how the conference is run, its organisation and agenda. In other words, as one former Minister and party chair said to me: “If the conference is a success, Margaret, it’s down to the politicians; if it’s a mess, then it’s down to you”. I stood down from this role last week to great acclaim by the Guardian’s Simon Hoggart who described in his column my conference report as “completely incomprehensible”. What better praise could a long-serving standing orders chair receive?

I chose Blackfriars for my title as it is in the London Borough of Southwark, where I was born and brought up. I am a voluntary trustee and chair of a small multiservice provider in Blackfriars, the Blackfriars Settlement. The settlement movement began in the late 19th century, when women from the Oxford University colleges founded settlements along the south bank of the Thames to live and work among the poorer families, especially women and children. There are six settlements across Southwark, all of them at the heart of their communities, providing vital services and support.

While a walk along the south bank shows Blackfriars in all its vibrancy, Southwark itself, despite huge regeneration, is still in the bottom 10 of the most deprived London boroughs. The settlements are locally unique in that each provides services covering young people, community and mental health, education, older people's services, young people's clubs, drop-in clubs for the mentally ill, befriending schemes for the elderly and isolated, a weekly free legal clinic and literacy, ESOL, job seeking and IT skills training. However, as we know and have heard, life is tough and challenging in the voluntary sector. In our settlement, 32 whole time equivalent staff, mostly part-time, work across 82 different funding and income streams, taking on additional or reduced hours as funding is secured or contracts are cancelled, or indeed losing their jobs. We could not deliver services without our amazing volunteers—more than 100 of them, of all ages and from diverse backgrounds and cultures, many of them former users of our services.

Most of the language of the debate around the big society assumes that voluntary organisations are a homogenous block—one big group of providers—but they are not. Like settlements, they are diverse local organisations, networks and self-help and neighbourhood groups, large and small. They spring from the bottom up to respond to and support local community needs and aspirations. They need to work within the framework of good public health, social care and education services, and should not be used as a cut-price answer to service provision.

Perhaps I may comment also on one perspective of the debate on the role of the voluntary sector that may not come to the forefront of consideration; namely, the impact of any changed role and alternative care delivery not just on users but also on carers. Again, I declare an interest as the carer of my partner, who suffered a major brain haemorrhage three years ago. I am sure that many noble Lords are familiar with the carer statistics. There are 5.5 million carers in Great Britain, and every day 6,000 people take on a caring responsibility. The carer’s and cared-for's daily experience is a mix of public service and voluntary and independent sector support; a complex web of care provision. We know that effective integration of health, social and voluntary care is a challenge, even with some of the excellent partnership and joint working initiatives that are in place.

You become a carer often out of the blue, and it changes your life—as well, of course, as that of the person you are caring for. For sudden illness, the first experience is of the NHS—in our case, good and fast diagnosis and treatment at the local hospital, fully in line with targets for scanning, assessment and treatment set out in the National Stroke Strategy. You turn to the Stroke Association for advice, information and guidance; for help to the local disabled people's user-led group; for personal support to the local authority carer support team. The carer is the key to enabling a person with severe disabilities to live at home. Continuing support involves good home support from the GP, local authority day care provision, a daily local authority social services package delivered by the independent sector, speech and communications support from an excellent small local charity and exercise sessions from another disability charity.

This is the localism currently in operation: intricate, complex packages of care in the community for people who require high-dependency support, such as sufferers from strokes, dementia, mental illness or MS. It is critical to carers that services are not further fragmented. Given appropriate funding and structural support, the voluntary sector could undoubtedly do more across health and social care. But it cannot do it in a climate of reduced statutory funding and falling donations and legacies.

I formally pay tribute to the work of the main carer charities—Carers UK, Crossroads and the Princess Royal Trust for Carers—which have achieved so much in highlighting the role that carers play in our society. I also welcome the current consultation on refreshing the 2008 National Carers Strategy that has done so much to make a difference to carers’ lives, and hope that this means meaningful continued support for the strategy.

In closing, I emphasise how much I look forward to being a full and active Member of the House. I have many interests and passions that I hope to pursue, such as international development, the countryside, riverways and the arts. From my experience of the House so far, I realise that there is much to do and to learn, and I really look forward to that.