Social Care: Family Carers
Baroness Wheeler Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to providing extra support for family carers given the delay to social care reforms.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
On behalf of my noble friend, and with her permission, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, we recognise that family carers play a vital role. When we announced an additional £4.5 billion over three years for social care, it included a commitment to take steps to ensure unpaid carers have the support, advice and respite they need. We will publish a White Paper later this year with more detail. The Health and Care Bill also places a duty on integrated care boards to promote the involvement of unpaid carers.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister has acknowledged that our 1.6 million unpaid carers are reporting high levels of fatigue and stress and are worn out and exhausted by caring during Covid-19. On average, carers have lost 25 hours a month of crucial support over the past 18 months, and 81% are providing more care. Essential daily support services for them and their loved ones are still not up and running in many areas. Was it not therefore reasonable for carers to have expected immediate funding support from the Prime Minister’s health and social care funding announcements last week? The situation is desperate and needs addressing now, not just with more kind words and another “White Paper tomorrow” promise.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I do acknowledge the pressures on unpaid carers and pay tribute to the incredible contribution they have made during these very difficult 18 months. We are continuing to work with local authorities, in collaboration with ADASS and MHCLG, to support local authorities in meeting their duties, particularly in the area of respite, which the noble Baroness rightly pointed out. We have also made contributions to Carers Trust, Carers UK and to “See, Hear, Respond” services to support unpaid carers. In the long term, our commitment is to social care reform and the financial proposition that we will bring forward in the White Paper.
Residential Social Care: Staff
Baroness Wheeler Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I am aware of the anecdotes that the noble Baroness alludes to, but they have not been seen through the figures that we have in the department. However, we are providing support to providers: we have a national recruitment campaign that is running in the autumn; we have put in free and fast-track DBS checks for staff recruited in response to the pandemic; and we have the promotion of adult social care careers in our jobcentres.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, while we await the announcement of the Prime Minister’s social care plan, after two frustrating years of non-action and delay, the continuing crisis in care homes needs to be dealt with now. With a possible 68,000 jobs now predicted to be lost in the light of the Government’s 11 November deadline for all care staff to be vaccinated, feedback from care providers shows that both care workers and the most senior and experienced staff are leaving the care workforce, with registered nursing staff constituting a much higher proportion than other care staff. What action have the Government taken to address this potential crisis in both the staffing and the management of care homes, particularly since the number of nursing jobs, for example, has decreased by 17,000, or 33%, over the past year?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I do not completely recognise all of the noble Baroness’s figures, but I acknowledge that recruitment in many sectors of the economy is tough at the moment, and that is why we are putting in the measures that I mentioned to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I add that we are doing an enormous amount to fund: we have put £1 billion of additional funding into social care for 2021-22, on top of the significant support provided to the sector during Covid-19 over the last year. This is money directly to address the issues that she is concerned about.
Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2021
Baroness Wheeler Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Wheeler
At the end to insert “but that this House regrets that the Regulations do not include any information about how the legislation will operate and that this will be left to guidance that will not be available until the end of July; further regrets that a full impact assessment has not been published including analysis of the number of current staff who may not comply and the potential impact on care homes if care home staff become ineligible for work because they are not fully vaccinated or medically exempt; notes that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee recommended that the debate on the instrument should be deferred until the operational guidance and full impact assessment has been published; and calls on Her Majesty’s Government to provide stronger supporting evidence for permanently requiring staff to have received both doses of the vaccine or, if they have not, to be banned from entering their workplace.”
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister. I am moving my amendment in the light of the deep concerns of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in its eighth report. I listened to its 13 July questioning of Nadhim Zahawi, the Vaccine Minister, which was held on the same day that the SI was debated in the Commons. The committee produced a further, 10th report yesterday in response to this. As its eighth report says,
“effective Parliamentary scrutiny is impossible”
by the House because crucial operational guidance and the impact assessment are not available, because none of the practical information about how the guidance is to operate is in the actual legislation before us, and because no reasons have been provided as to why the legislation is not a restricted pandemic measure rather than the permanent measure that the Government are proposing.
The Commons debate was focused on the failure to produce the impact assessment so essential for understanding the full consequences of the legislation. The Health Minister promised that we would have it before our debate today; the Vaccine Minister instead undertook to provide an impact statement, which the committee still had not had at the time of its further report. I am still not clear which piece of the last-minute information promised has been delivered, and the Minister’s speech may have confused me still further about what is and what is not available.
So we have more documentation and more information but not the full and detailed impact assessment that is needed. Overall, we still do not have the answers to the committee’s fundamental questions: why has the vaccination programme not managed to achieve the required levels despite care home staff being prioritised, and why the regional variations? Why has there been no detailed analysis of the impact the policy will have on care home staff and the possible risk to the viability of care homes as a result? We still have had no real analysis of the degree and nature of the opposition to the proposals expressed during the consultation, which could provide helpful guidance on how it is to be addressed.
This SI is muddled, confused and disjointed and, in places, contradictory—across the SI itself, the Explanatory Memorandum and in the Government’s consultation response. This makes even more urgent the publication of clear and detailed guidance which includes not just the practical detail the committee wants to see but the full policy framework. We are assured that the guidance has been produced in consultation with the sector. Can the Minister confirm that this has included care home providers from both large and small group homes, and the staff unions? Is there now a firm publication date, other than just the end of the month, in 11 days’ time, that we have been promised?
Specifically on consultation, the Government’s consultation response document itself admits that 57% of respondents were against the mandatory vaccination of staff. Nadhim Zahawi stressed to the committee how important it was to “carry people with us” and our Minister told the House on 8 July:
“We are in a consultation … it is an honest consultation. We have to take people with us: this is not something that we can impose on people against their will.”—[Official Report, 8/7/21; col. 1454.]
How will the Minister now honour that commitment, and how does he square it with the legislation that the Government have actually produced?
In its report, the committee is particularly scathing about the DHSC’s failure to provide justification for the substantial policy change from using the SAGE advice, mentioned by the Minister, of at least 80% of care home staff needing a first vaccination in order to provide a minimum level of protection against Covid-19 to the requirement for them to have two doses or they will be banned from the workplace and stand to lose their job. Why this shift and what is the detailed evidence which led to such a major policy change?
Despite our deep concern about the health and safety of care home residents, no one doubts the impact that mandatory vaccination will have on care home staff in their jobs, the risks to the viability of care homes and the confusion that will reign, especially in small care homes coping with even worse staff shortages and recruitment problems than they currently have and trying to administer and monitor the trades- person, et cetera, visiting arrangements. The National Care Forum has been particularly vocal on that latter point. We just do not know the scale and extent of the risk in a sector that already has 100,000 unfilled posts.
These are dedicated staff who have been in the front line of care through the pandemic. We need to understand why there is vaccine hesitancy among the minority of staff and build and strengthen the excellent work that has been done with so many to allay fears and assuage concerns arising from cultural or personal health fears.
Can the Minister explain how the Government will ensure that the 16-week grace period is used to intensify and ramp up the take-up campaign and ensure the targeting of regions and areas where there is relatively low take-up? Will it be extended if the impact assessment and implementation plan show that that is needed?
Paragraph 12 of the EM contains only five short points dealing with the serious staff shortages that the care sector will face, starting with the bald understatement that there will be
“the short-term cost of dealing with staff absences”.
Moreover, the EM goes back to the Care Act 2014 provision, which assumes that local authorities have a contingency plan to address workforce shortages and care provider closures. Given the Government’s sweeping council social care funding cuts for the past 10 years, we know just what state councils would be in if they tried to meet that contingency. Last week ADASS reported up to 250,000 vulnerable people across England languishing on social care waiting lists for care assessments or service reviews to check their physical and mental state. Will additional funding be made available to councils to meet the extra costs of staff shortages and turnover?
In conclusion, the House must be reassured that there will be a detailed, coherent, well-resourced and fully thought-through plan for moving forward and finding solutions for carrying and taking people with us—in the words of the Ministers—and addressing the major challenges that implementing the mandatory vaccination of care home staff will present. We must be reassured that the Secondary Legislation Committee’s rightful concerns have been fully addressed. For the record, its 10th report, published yesterday, stresses that, despite the welcome “further information and explanations” from the Government,
“we remain unclear about the justification for some of the policy choices underlying these Regulations and also the basis on which the department struck a balance between public health benefits and the impact on the rights of individuals.”
I look forward to the contributions of other noble Lords and the Minister’s response, and I will wish to test the opinion of the House on this very important issue. I beg to move.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and all noble Lords for their contributions on this very important SI. Of course, I join in the tributes to social care staff across the sector during the pandemic. As I said in moving the amendment, my focus is on the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s rightful concerns about the inadequacy of the legislation and the Government’s failure to produce the essential guidance needed or the full impact assessment of the risks to the future of many care homes from the huge disruption that will take place. It is not an SI that is pandemic-restricted, a temporary measure; instead it is permanent legislation, which makes the quality of the SI even more important and reinforces the inadequacy of the legislation we have before us today on such an important issue for care homes, their staff and residents.
My noble friend Lord Hunt and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, sought an assurance from the Minister that the measures will be temporary and time-limited, but we did not get that assurance. Once again we have an SI that seeks to extend unspecified government powers in legislation without justifying why those powers are needed. In other words, this is, as the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee says,
“guidance exceeding its ancillary function and taking on the role of legislation”.
Noble Lords raised many points and I fear there is just not time now to respond to them. Overall, this SI remains an incoherent, muddled and confused piece of legislation and further last-minute information and reassurances from the Government have not made it any clearer or dealt with the key issues that need to be addressed. I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Health: Dementia
Baroness Wheeler Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, not only are there deep concerns about the sharp drop in memory clinic referrals during the pandemic; the Alzheimer’s Society also has very real fears that the virtual assessments currently taking the place of attendance at memory clinics run the risk of exacerbating inequalities in treatment and excluding large cohorts of patients. What is the Government’s overall strategy for ensuring that vital day care and hospital services are reopened and that the backlogs in referrals are addressed, for providing the rehabilitation that people with dementia need to counteract the effects on their cognitive and physical function, and for providing support for their mental health and well-being?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, guidance to help enhance best practice in dementia assessment and diagnosis was recently updated and published to support a personalised approach and choice in the delivery of remote consultation or face-to-face diagnosis. The guidance was developed in collaboration with stakeholders, including those with lived experience, and through the Dementia Change Action Network. I completely acknowledge the point that the noble Baroness makes. We are working as hard as we can to get the kind of face-to-face assessments she describes. They play an essential role in what we do.
Social Care Reform
Baroness Wheeler Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, in last week’s very powerful debate on social care, noble Lords from across the House made it clear that we cannot build a better future for our country after Covid-19 without transforming social care, but instead of a firm date for the Prime Minister’s clear plan, we had the usual reassurances from the Minister that it was still absolutely under way, we would see some social care foundations in integrated care systems under the NHS and care Bill but that it would still be the “end of the year” before the Prime Minister reveals his clear plan to all.
Over these nearly two wasted years we have had delays and broken promises. Almost 42,000 care home residents have died from Covid-19, 2 million people have applied for support but had their request refused, tens of thousands have had to sell their home to pay for care, millions of families have hit breaking point and staff have been appallingly let down. Even after all the horrors of this pandemic, nine out of 10 councils say that they face care budget cuts this year.
While the Government dither and cancel key meetings and the Prime Minister blocks various funding options, the social care funding crisis deepens. Now we see in the Daily Telegraph that the new Secretary of State considers that we are completely at the wrong stage of Parliament to launch a new social care strategy. What is going on?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell)
My Lords, the commitment to publishing a review of social care is absolutely heartfelt. We have delivered on Brexit and the vaccines, and we will deliver on social care. The Prime Minister has made it crystal clear that that will be done by the end of the year; that commitment remains in place. It will require enormous financial commitment by the whole nation at a time when our finances as a nation are extremely stretched. Therefore, it is entirely right that very careful consideration is given to it. It will also involve a very large amount of engagement with other parties and the relevant stakeholders. Again, this is not something that has been rushed. We have just been through the most awful pandemic; it is not possible to do a review of this generational nature at the same time as fighting this awful disease, but we will be true to our commitments and deliver the plan as promised.
Social Care and the Role of Carers
Baroness Wheeler Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, on securing this debate and on her usual very thorough and thoughtful introduction. Of course, it is deeply frustrating for us all to be yet again debating the ever-deepening crisis in social care in the absence of any sign of the Government living up to their promises of reform and “once and for all” change, in the words of the Prime Minister.
The excellent “national scandal” report of our Economic Affairs Committee was our last major debate on this vital issue and is still an authoritative source for this debate. The committee warned, and it is worth repeating, that:
“With each delay the level of unmet need in the system increases, the pressure on unpaid carers grows stronger, the supply of care providers diminishes and the strain on the care workforce continues.”
That is why it is so important for us all to keep up the pressure, as noble Lords have done this afternoon, hammering home the scale of the crisis and the substantial extra funding urgently needed. This must be sustainable long-term funding, not just the welcome but wholly inadequate plugging-the-hole periodic cash injections that Ministers trumpet at every opportunity as the solution to the deep crisis we are in.
I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, for specifying unpaid carers. As usual, her words were movingly reinforced by my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley and by almost every speaker; it is a most welcome and essential focus. They drew on the extensive surveys and reports produced by Carers UK for Carers Week. In these we heard from carers themselves on the huge challenges they have faced during the pandemic—not just the absence of essential breaks and respite but the impact on their own health and well-being and their worries about when the key daycare and other services, vital to the loved ones they care for, will come back.
Many routine but essential services came to a halt during the pandemic, as noble Lords have spelt out. For example, I am a carer and the excellent services at our local community centre—stroke clubs, memory clinics for people with dementia, community meals and support groups—show no sign of reopening until at least September. For carers of disabled people, people with learning difficulties and disabled children and their families, this daily or week-by-week support is so important. It is devastating when it is not there. It helps carers cope, gives them a chance to get on with the other things they have to do and, most important, helps to keep the person they are caring for well, active and engaged.
A longer break for carers and the cared-for is just as important. As Care England has said, respite care provided by many care homes has been withdrawn because of the 14-day isolation requirement. For younger adults with learning disabilities living at home with parents, a few days of respite every month or even week, or care home provision if the carer falls ill, is a key part of their care plan. It helps carers continue to cope. The Minister has promised us a meeting with Carers UK; I hope he is arranging it with the urgency it deserves. Can he please update us on the progress of the department of health and local authority talks and work he referred to last week to ensure that daycare centres and care services are reopened?
We know that the Minister’s response today will contain all the elements we are used to hearing about government funding support for carers, the care workforce and social care during the pandemic, and the now-familiar “later this year” promise of the social care reform proposals. But it is clear from today’s debate that, nearly two years after the Prime Minister’s Downing Street doorstep pledge, such is the despondency, scepticism and doubt about this latest deadline that it is almost not worth asking the Government how they are getting on with it—particularly with the recent press reports on cancelled meetings and the Prime Minister’s obdurate blocking of various funding options.
On the issue of cross-party consensus, raised by a number of speakers, rather than just his usual passing reference it is time for the Minister to explain today just what he means by this. To repeat for the record, we had cross-party consensus on the Care Act 2014 setting up the care cap on funding costs recommended by the Dilnot commission, the eligibility criteria for social care and many other important reforms, such as legal rights for carers to assessment and support. The consensus on the cap was there during the 2015 general election, councils were given lead-in preparation funding for implementation in April 2016, and £6 billion was allocated for care cap costs. But we know the rest of the story: delayed implementation and then cancellation —too costly—the £6 billion gone and huge sums of implementation funding just wasted.
The same cross-party consensus was reinforced in the “national scandal” report, as the chair of that committee, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, made clear in the previous debate. On these Benches we have strongly welcomed this report as a fully costed and solid basis for moving forward. It shows the scale of extra funding needed to break the cycle of chronic underfunding and unmet need, and to begin to address the unfairness and disparity in entitlement to care between the NHS and social care.
Many noble Lords have today again articulated the committee’s fundamental principles, which have the widespread support among the social care stakeholders and community that the Government say they want—for example, the top priority of restoring local authority funding for social care to 2010 pre-austerity levels; an end to councils’ dependence on locally raised funding for social care; a new £7 billion-a-year system for providing free personal care to help people with basic daily needs such as washing and dressing; and a major investment in a new deal for the social care workforce and joined-up workforce planning with the NHS. That is an excellent consensus on which to move forward, and the Minister knows it; it makes the current delays and dithering inexcusable.
On the vital issue of a new deal for social care staff, like all noble Lords I add my heartfelt tribute to them, not just for the pandemic but for the year-on-year dedication they have shown in the face of low pay and lack of public understanding and appreciation of the value of their work. They are a skilled profession and need and deserve the training, career and pay structures that properly reflect this. Raising the status and standing of care staff has to be a key part of social care transformation.
The positive signs of the impact that Covid has had on the public’s awareness and perceptions of care work are welcome. For example, the recent survey with care providers, stakeholders, care workers and candidates by the Work Foundation and Totaljobs reinforces this, showing an increase of 39% in people applying for social care roles in the last two years; younger candidates more likely to pursue a career in social work; and 56% of new starters in care joining from other sectors. This is promising, but these staff will stay in the profession for the medium and longer term only if there is fundamental reform to social care staff’s pay and professional status.
One of the key features of today’s debate has been the range of speeches across social care provision—I very much welcome this—not just on adult social care and the care of older people but on working-age disabled adults and children, people with learning difficulties and the importance of mental health social care, so often overlooked. This was referred to by my noble friend Lady Donaghy and the noble Baroness, Lady Barker.
The excellent briefing from the charity Rethink Mental Illness has been referred to in relation to the vital role that this should play in supporting people living with severe mental illness to help them to recover from hospital care, stay well and not go back into crisis. I hope that the Minister’s response will include reassurances that their needs will be included in social care reform. The parliamentary briefings that the seven leading charities representing working-age disabled people are organising for July will be very valuable in increasing our understanding of how social care should be working for this vital group. I hope that as many noble Lords as possible are able to attend.
During the debate, we were constantly reminded that half of local authority public social care funding is spent on working-age people and that local authorities also deliver children’s social care. This was so sharply brought into focus by the publication earlier this month of the first stage of the MacAlister independent review, which called for major reform and investment to ensure the effective protection of young people at risk. Alas, there is no time to debate this today, but we sadly see the same fragmented, disjointed system across multiple government departments and agencies, with the life chances of vulnerable children paying the price.
On residential care, noble Lords have rightly pressed the Minister on the issues that have so dominated our consideration of the SIs, Statements and Questions during the pandemic—on testing, PPE, hospital discharges to care homes, visitor access, indemnity insurance and occupancy guarantees. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on this, particularly on how care funding will be provided when the infection control fund ends at the end of this month.
We have had yet another powerful debate today. Noble Lords have made it clear that we cannot build a better future for our country after Covid-19 without transforming social care, and that real progress is needed now. If the press reports and rumours are correct and government focus is on reintroducing the care cap after all, five years after it could have started, this would address only part of the problem. It would not be the comprehensive plan for the reform and sustainable funding of social care that is so vitally needed.
I echo noble Lords’ good wishes to the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, in her new role. My noble friend Lady Thornton and I have always enjoyed working with her, and we very much value her contribution and work.
Covid-19: Care Homes
Baroness Wheeler Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I completely sympathise with the point on those in care homes receiving a very tough challenge when they have been prevented from seeing loved ones. We have had to take extremely severe infection control measures, many of which are still in place for the reasons that have been discussed in this Chamber before. But I challenge the noble Lord’s point on testing. We brought in testing when asymptomatic infection was recognised and when the capacity was available.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, can the Minister explain why the Secretary of State continues to justify himself by quoting the seriously underestimated PHE January to October 2020 data assessment on hospital discharges to care homes of 286 Covid deaths? The National Care Forum of care providers has repeatedly made clear how fundamentally flawed and incredibly partial that data is. Only limited numbers of symptomatic patients in hospitals and care homes were tested, and cases not tested before death are not included. Even the chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has said that relying on this for a full picture of the situation is a stretch of the imagination. We owe it to the people who have died, their relatives and care home providers to have full, accurate and independent information. How is the Minister going to ensure that it is urgently provided, so that we can genuinely learn from what happened?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I acknowledge the noble Baroness’s concerns, but the PHE report is extremely thorough. I am not aware of it being revised, but if it is, I would be glad to share that information with the noble Baroness.
Carers: Support
Baroness Wheeler Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Wheeler
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that carers get the support and breaks they need.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, the love, commitment and sheer hard work of Britain’s unpaid carers have saved lives and made a huge difference to the country’s most vulnerable. The nation is hugely grateful. I completely recognise the impact the pandemic has had on access to support and breaks. Local authorities have an important responsibility to assess carers’ needs, and I pay tribute to the efforts of local authorities as we work together to reopen day and respite services.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, I commend to the Minister Carers UK’s excellent 40-page report produced for Carers Week. In it, we hear from carers themselves, not just on the lack of essential breaks and respite but on caring during the pandemic, their own health and their worries about when key day care and other services vital to the loved ones they care for, and suspended during lockdown for over a year now, will be reinstated. If he reads the report carefully, he will see the reality of everyday life for thousands of carers. Funding given to councils during the pandemic has not been anywhere near enough for the vital role they have been expected to play, and the funding the Minister repeatedly refers to has simply not reached carers. How will the Government address this appalling situation and ensure that unpaid carers are given the funding and support they need and deserve?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I too pay tribute to the Carers UK report. I read the very moving personal testimonies in that report and for that reason I took a call with Carers UK this morning in order to understand the recommendations it has made. There is an enormous amount to do. The practical role of the department is to work with local authorities to ensure that day centres and care services are reopened. There are massive infection control issues, but we are working extremely hard with local authorities to ensure that that reopening can happen quickly so that carers get the support they need.
Care Homes: Insurance Indemnity
Baroness Wheeler Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I acknowledge the challenge faced by care homes on the insurance market, but CQC statistics suggest that, in fact, the insurance industry has done an enormous amount to meet the needs of care homes and that many of the pressures on care homes have been the result of Covid outbreaks. We have brought in the designated settings indemnity support, as the noble Baroness knows, and we have given £6 billion to local authorities to support care homes. Putting care homes on the same footing as the NHS would not meet the needs of the care home sector, so that is not something we are looking at currently.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, the Financial Times warned in January that care homes were having to turn away new patients as they struggled and failed to get liability insurance to cover Covid-related claims. There is also huge speculation that a flood of claims is coming as pre-existing claims management companies and many set up purely to deal with Covid-19 cases are vying for business for personal injury claims and compensation for the loss of a loved one. What assessment has the Minister made of the risk that Covid-related litigation poses to the sustainability of the whole social care sector?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, in the year from March 2020, the number of patients has in fact increased from 457,000 to 458,000. The CQC is monitoring the situation extremely closely and its data from the insurance industry suggests that, although there has been some pressure on some companies, there have also been new entrants and the amount of support available to the social care sector is resilient.
Social Care: Person-centred Dementia Care
Baroness Wheeler Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I entirely agree with the extremely touching way the noble Lord put that. To take a glass-half-full approach for a moment, I have been struck in the pandemic by the huge amount of public support for the protection of those who are older and vulnerable, including those with dementia. It has been a very touching feature of the national response to the pandemic that the country has come together to protect the most vulnerable, and I think there has been a national rethink about how we relate to those in that condition.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, we know that the costs for families of caring for those with dementia can be long-lasting and catastrophic, as the Commons Health and Social Care Committee has emphasised in setting up a new inquiry, and from our excellent Economic Affairs Committee report on social care, which found that the typical cost of an individual’s dementia care is £100,000. According to the Alzheimer’s Society, two-thirds of this cost is currently being paid for by people with dementia and their families, either in unpaid care or in paid-for private social care, in contrast to other conditions, such as heart disease and cancer, for which the NHS provides care free at the point of need. People with dementia should not bear the sole responsibility for saving and paying for their care. When will this Government address this key parity of esteem issue, end this disparity and protect people with dementia from the catastrophic costs of care?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the Prime Minister has made it very clear that he is committed to bringing forward proposals to address this issue before the end of the year. He stands by that commitment. I look forward to the kind of cross-party and cross-society collaboration that will be necessary to address that massive generational challenge.