Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Baroness Royall of Blaisdon

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 79L tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, who unfortunately cannot be in his place this evening. The purpose of the amendment to which I have added my name is to ensure that carers are identified and signposted to the enhanced support outlined in the Bill as early as possible and before they reach crisis point. I put my name to this amendment following a discussion with Macmillan, to which I am very grateful for its excellent briefing, about the situation of approximately 905,000 cancer carers in England, half of whom are not receiving any support despite the fact that cancer has a real impact on their lives. Of course, the impact is nowhere near as big as that on the person with cancer but nearly half of carers say that it affects their mental health and well-being; one in five says that it affects their relationships and working life; and 15% say that it affects their household finances. Almost half of cancer carers identify at least one type of support they are not currently receiving that would assist them with their caring duties. They are in real need of help but are not aware of who or where to turn for support.

As many noble Lords will know from personal experience, the real problem is that many cancer carers do not think of themselves as carers but they might well need information, advice or support. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley has just made the same point in general about all carers. They have no idea about things such as the local authority carers’ assessment, which is the gateway to statutory support. Consequently, the number of cancer carers who have had such an assessment is far lower than for those caring for people with other conditions and disabilities. Evidence shows that health professionals simply do not identify cancer carers as carers and do not signpost them to help or support.

Therefore, while I welcome the fact that the Care Bill enhances rights for carers, including placing a new duty on local authorities to undertake a carers’ assessment for all carers and to meet the eligible needs of carers, there is a gap which this amendment is designed to fill. Cancer carers have a lot of contact with the NHS but they seldom come into contact with local authorities. This amendment would help to ensure that all NHS bodies work with local authorities to improve the identification of all carers so that in turn they can be assessed and access appropriate support.

In the Care and Support White Paper the Government said that,

“there is still an unacceptable variation in access to tailored support for carers”.

It outlines its requirement for,

“NHS organisations to work with their local authority partners … to agree plans and budgets for identifying and supporting carers”.

This amendment would provide a vehicle for ensuring that this optimal practice of joint identification and partnership became a reality throughout England where, at the moment, the identification is at best patchy and at worst non-existent. Local authorities should take the lead but they could benefit greatly from the help of many relevant health bodies such as NHS England, CCGs, and primary care and hospital trusts which already have procedures and systems in place to identify carers. Clearly, that does not always happen.

The amendment would not lead to additional expenditure. In fact, if carers were identified as early as possible, when in most cases they just need signposting to information and advice, it could save money. Fewer carers would reach the sort of crisis point that requires NHS support for themselves and local authority support for the person for whom they are caring.

On Saturday, I was in Torbay and I talked with some people about their excellent system of integrated healthcare in which they understand that a whole-system approach is needed to support carers and that proactive identification is needed by the NHS. I was therefore interested to read a quote from Mr James Drummond, lead officer for integrated services at the Torbay and Southern Devon Health and Care NHS Trust, in which he says:

“If we wait for carers to approach us we may not engage until there is a crisis. Proactive identification is good practice, but national support is needed to spread this across the country. It should be made clear that identifying carers and signposting them to support is the responsibility of all health and social care professionals, not just local authorities”.

That says it all. I know that the Government recognise the need for the NHS and local authorities to work together on this important issue so I very much hope that the noble Earl will use this amendment and agree to look at ways of formally involving the NHS in the local authority duty to identify carers.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, this is a very important group of amendments, and I very much support my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley in her Amendments 78F, 79E, 79H, 88C, 88E and 88F. I also support my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition in her Amendment 79L, emphasising the importance of working with the National Health Service.

My Amendments 79F, 79J and 79M to Clause 2 concern the position of young carers. They aim essentially to ensure that local authorities provide or arrange services to prevent young carers from developing needs for care and support, as well as preventing and reducing needs for adults and adult carers. The 2011 census identified 178,000 young carers who have to care for a relative in England and Wales alone. It is good that the Government have now acknowledged that, given the changes being introduced by the Care Bill for adult carers, the law must also be reviewed for young carers. However, we need a much clearer indication of what these changes will look like and particularly of how the Care Bill will ensure that adults receive sufficient care and support so that children are protected from excessive and inappropriate caring roles. We cannot have a situation where people have unmet care and support needs, which results in children and young people having to meet these needs.

I recently met a young man who had been caring for someone in his family for most of his life. He told me that it would have made a huge difference to him if his family had received support earlier. If this had happened, his caring responsibilities might not have had such a clear and serious impact on his education. He is doing well now and hopes to go to university, but it has clearly been extremely challenging for him to stay in education, and there are many thousands of other young people who have been similarly affected. That is why my amendments to Clause 2 are so important. They make clear that local authorities must take steps to prevent children from carrying out caring duties that have a detrimental effect on their health and well-being. Can the noble Earl assure me that the Care Bill will be amended to ensure that this is the case? If he can, I would welcome an indication of which parts of the Bill will be amended so that young carers are protected.

My other amendments on this issue are to Clause 12, which provides for regulations on whole-family assessment. Again, the Government have indicated that they will look at how the law might be changed for young carers in the Bill, but it is not clear how that might be done. We know that currently adult social care services and health services routinely fail to identify children who may be caring for an adult, even where the adult is assessed. That also applies to educational establishments. That means that often children can continue to undertake harmful caring roles and end up developing needs for care and support themselves.

It is very important that adult needs assessments relate to any child in the household, so that inappropriate caring by children is prevented and children's needs for support are prevented or reduced. The law must be clear that adult services need to help to identify young carers. The presence of a young carer should always constitute an appearance of need for the family and should automatically trigger an assessment of the person for whom they care. Can the noble Earl confirm that this is indeed the Government’s view? Will it be made clear, through primary care or regulations, that there should be consideration of whether a joint child and adult assessment would be appropriate and that children’s services should work together; consideration of whether any child should be assessed for support in their own right under children’s law; and consideration of whether lower-level support may be needed for the whole family, including the child?

It is a pity that we are taking this important debate at so late an hour, and no doubt we will return to this matter on Report, but I look forward to the noble Earl’s response.