Social Care

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, on securing this topical debate and am very aware of the many years that she has devoted to this field. To say, as everyone has, what challenges there are is a complete understatement. It is in such a state at the moment that it is very difficult to know where to go and how to deal with it.

I attended a meeting which the noble Baroness held recently for carers. It was interesting because I tend to think of carers as people who work in the care industry, and her people were alarmed that someone such as me was there, who was interested in people who are working as employees in the care industry. There has to be closer liaison between these two groups. Voluntary carers are fantastic in all they do, but I remember knocking on doors and speaking to people who said they were completely worn out and did not know how much longer they could continue because they had been looking after their elderly mother and were already pretty elderly themselves. That is when the care worker comes in to give respite care or to help out on some occasions. The two need to work together: the huge number of individuals related to people or caring for them voluntarily and the other side.

One problem that stunned me in the meeting was that when people in ordinary employment went to their employer and said that they now had to take on a caring responsibility for a relation, their employer did not want to know them much longer, because they thought it would interrupt their work. I could understand it because, from running a dental practice, I know that if someone goes on maternity leave and you have only two people, you are in a difficult position while one is away. You wondering whether she will come back; you have to hold the vacancy for a long time; and then she decides not to come back after all that. It is not easy. Nevertheless, there must be a change of attitude of firms so that they can make provision for their staff to be able to help a family member who really needs it.

Care workers usually work in what is run as a business and acts as an agency for a local authority, but whoever is doing the work shares the same aim, and respite care is important. The loss of cottage hospitals means that there is now no interim stage: people have to go from a hospital where they are pushed out, often in the middle of the night, when care workers are often the only people who can be there to receive them at home and see that they are safe.

We must be quite sure that the care industry is working correctly. I spoke to one person who was with her friend and someone was due to arrive to give her lunch at 12 o’clock. There was no sign of them, but the one due at 2.30 or 3 arrived and gave her lunch. Then the other one turned up and said that she had just come to sign to say that she had given lunch. Then they said, “What do you mean: you have given lunch? The next person has given the lunch”. That must be checked on.

When I was chairman of social services on a local council, we checked on those things. Someone dropped in at random to check whether you were actually on the job. It is important to ensure that one carer does not come in to find that the other has left someone in an appalling state and done nothing that they were meant to do. That is very unfair and random checks would deal with it.

People want to live independently and they want to die in their own beds. This was said to me by Essex County Council, which sent us a very good paper. I followed up and spoke to Councillor Madden, who was very interesting. He said that they had developed what is called a “good life” conversation. First, they ask: “What can you still do for yourself and what help do you really need?”. Then they look at what they can do to help them get back to where they were, if there is a prospect of that. Otherwise, they just have to go on with it.

I have no time to say more, but much more could be said. I hope that we will hear many other points brought out by other speakers this afternoon.