Care Bill [HL]

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Emerton (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, and agree with the views just expressed by the noble Baroness about spirituality. I ask for the forgiveness of your Lordships’ House for this late intervention on the subject. I speak as a retired nurse, but I am nevertheless aware of the situations that nurses are placed in concerning this issue.

Let me start at the beginning. The Nursing and Midwifery Council, places a requirement on every new graduate that each nurse, in partnership with the person, their carers and their families,

“makes a holistic, person centred and systematic assessment of physical, emotional, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual needs, including risk, and together, develops a comprehensive personalised plan of nursing care”.

When I was taught in the preliminary training school, holistic care was described as the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the patient, as in the 1950s, language was not so sophisticated to call it holistic care with all the ingredients that the NMC spells out. Nevertheless, the principles were well rooted. As a student, I clearly remember the description of today’s holistic care likened to a three-legged milking stool: when one leg breaks, it affects the whole stool. Likewise, if there is a physical condition, the whole person requires attention, be that psychological or spiritual.

It became necessary in 2010 for the Royal College of Nursing to commission a survey on spirituality. It revealed that members wanted more education and guidance about spiritual care, clarification about personal and professional boundaries, and support in dealing with spiritual issues. Within the survey it emerged that there was agreement that spiritual care is a fundamental part of nursing currently much neglected through ignorance and misunderstanding. A pocket book was prepared for the use of nurses, which states:

“The practice of spiritual care is about meeting people at the point of deepest need. It is about not just ‘doing to’ but ‘being with’ them. It is about our attitudes, behaviours and our personal qualities … It is about treating spiritual needs with the same level of attention as physical needs”.

In 1988, as Hitchens quoted:

“Often it is not until a crisis, illness … or suffering occurs that the illusion of security is shattered. Illness, suffering … and ultimately death … become spiritual encounters as well as physical and emotional experiences”.

Spiritual care is not just about religious belief and practice or about imposing belief and values on another using a position to convert. It is not a specialist activity or the sole responsibility of a chaplain. It is about hope and strength, trust, meaning and purpose, belief and faith in self and others. For some, this includes a belief in a deity and a higher power, people’s values, love and relationships, morality, creativity and self- expression.

Eighty per cent of care is delivered by nurses in hospitals and hospices. Nursing homes and care homes are less well supported by registered nurses but again support workers need to understand the relationship between physical, mental and spiritual needs in order to gain the right support for the person being cared for. However, this can be achieved only if nurses have enough time to be with the patient to establish a relationship and to pick up where there is a need. It cannot be done in 15 minutes, but in 15 minutes a registered nurse may pick up the need and be able to pass it on to someone who can give the help that is needed.

I hope the Minister will feel able to support the amendment before us as the words “spiritual well-being” are more explicit about what is required than the word “beliefs”. I hope this short explanation of the depth and breadth in which the nursing profession has explored this subject reflects the enormous amount of work that is required by all caring staff in whatever capacity to understand that the need for holistic care to meet the needs of those being cared for and their families is not restricted to physical or psychiatric treatment but includes spiritual well-being covering many innermost personal needs at often the most vulnerable time in their lives.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, for his kind words about the work I did on this issue. On Report, I tabled the amendment which stands in his name today because at that point the Government were working to a definition of well-being which was about emotional well-being, and it was my view that it did not sufficiently encapsulate the matters we would define as spiritual. My name is not on the amendment today because over the past few weeks I have discussed this at some considerable length with a number of people, not least with the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Warner, on BBC Radio 4 at some unearthly hour a couple of Sundays ago.

I think the Minister has met us where we need to be because his amendment refers to “feelings and beliefs”, which is a fairly wide and inclusive term. It is important that we take his words, not the wording proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, because most of the discussion this afternoon has been about health and healthcare in healthcare settings, such as end-of-life settings, but this Bill is about social care at its widest in the community. Therefore we are perhaps not talking about the well-being of people at the end stage of their life, and it is important that we stick to a wider definition of a person’s beliefs because we are not talking just about medical matters.

The way the Government have framed the argument is sufficiently wide to include spiritual beliefs. I think in the normal course of conversation, when we talk about beliefs, we have almost a hierarchy of them. Religious beliefs perhaps come fairly high at the top; then people would secondarily think about spiritual beliefs. They might go on to talk about political beliefs being important to a person’s well-being. That is why I think that this time the Government have got this right. It is sufficiently clear and sufficiently inclusive to reflect all the concerns that remain legitimate on behalf of people backing my noble friend Lord Cormack’s amendment.

On this occasion the belt and braces are unnecessary and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, has got the House to the point where it wants to be. I will be quite happy to support that, not least because I think if we reform it we go with that formulation of words. Then we will be able to do the one thing which I think the law has to do, which is to be there as a backstop for those people who believe that their feelings and wishes are not being acknowledged and are being abused. That is the primary purpose of this legislation. Therefore, it should be as wide as possible.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

What the noble Baroness has just said prompts me to point out a difficulty. We are in an age when there is controversy about spirituality, when people can actually lose their jobs over issues of spirituality. If there were to be a case arising under this legislation in which such a matter arose and spirituality was not mentioned in the Bill, the position of those people would be a great deal weaker than if the Bill was amended as my noble friend suggests. Like the Chief Whip, I know that it is contrary to our normal custom to divide at this stage, but it seems that this is an issue of sufficient importance on the one hand and of narrowness of scope on the other to make it both necessary and painless.