Social Care Strategy

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for initiating this debate, the importance of which was underlined by the sheer volume of the high-quality briefing that we have all had for it. There is a fairly common analysis in those representations: declining funding for the sector over many years, leading to delays in assessment and then unmet need, in turn putting pressure on carers, aggravated by workforce pressures, which is made worse by poor pay and conditions for the workforce. The whole problem is compounded by decades of indifference by successive Governments.

In the time available I want to focus on young carers. In another place, I met a group of impressive young people, Andover Young Carers. They were different from older carers. Older carers know that they are carers; they see themselves as carers. These young carers did not see themselves as carers at all but as brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, and grandchildren. They looked after their relative because that is what they had always done; for them, that was life. Unlike older carers, they had never been non-carers. A further difference was that these young people were coping with the demands of full-time school and college, and at the same time coping with the challenges of the transition from child to adult. Their needs are very different, and I hope that we will not forget them in the short debate today.

The 2021 census showed over 50,000 young carers caring for over 50 hours a week—that is more than the standard working week. Worryingly, within that figure of 15,000, 3,000 were aged between five and nine. The Carers Trust has shown that those young carers at school are at risk of a poorer attendance record and lower academic achievement, and also more liable to social isolation and, sadly, bullying.

What do we do about it? The APPG of which I was the vice-chairman did an inquiry, and we met lots of young carers last year. They told us that, on average, it took three years before their needs were identified and up to 10 years before some of them even got support. That is inexcusable. They also told us that that support came only when they reached absolute crisis point, so we need to identify their needs much earlier, downstream. There needs to be consultation between the various settings of adult services, children’s services and education. There is a memorandum of understanding called No Wrong Doors for Young Carers, which is designed to improve joint working between adult services, children’s services, integrated care boards and other statutory organisations. Despite a requirement for local authorities to have such joint working arrangements in place, recent research by the Carers Trust found that only 7% of local authorities appear to have done so. I will ask the Minister just one question. Does she agree that all local authorities should sign up to that memorandum so that young carers get the support they need?