Care Bill [HL]

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

6: Clause 1, page 2, line 34, at end insert—
“( ) For the purposes of this section, “an individual” includes a person with parental responsibility for a disabled child.”

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

In the unavoidable absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and at her request, I shall move Amendment 6 and speak to Amendments 8 and 9 tabled in her name and mine, and speak to my Amendments 46, 47, 48 and 58.

The first group of amendments concerns parent carers. The Care Bill is drafted to apply only to adult carers of adults. This means that the new rights for carers included in the Bill will not apply to adults caring for disabled children or to children caring for disabled adults. The Government have committed to address this disparity for young carers by bringing forward very welcome changes in how they will join up this Bill and the Children and Families Bill to meet the needs of young carers and their families. This is extremely welcome, but it will leave parents of disabled children as the only group of carers whose rights to assessments and support will be left behind.

Carers UK and other carers organisations have been deeply disappointed that parent carers’ rights are not being given the same recognition as other carers’ rights and that the legislative technicality of their rights falling under the remit of children’s rather than adults’ legislation risks them being left with inferior rights. These amendments include parent carers in three key places in the Bill in order to probe the Government’s intentions regarding parents of disabled children and how they intend to address the disparity with the rights of parent carers. The Government have put forward an approach which joins up the Care Bill and the Children and Families Bill for young carers—which is very much to be welcomed and on which the Government are to be congratulated—and these amendments call for them to do the same for parents of disabled children. If nothing is done about this, parents of disabled children will be left with lesser and inconsistent rights to assessment and support. The rights of certain groups of carers will be left at different levels in different pieces of legislation, which will be confusing for many people, and parents of disabled children, who already have difficulty accessing support, will find it even harder to participate in work and their community in any way at all.

In this Bill, the Government are improving the rights of carers for adults by removing the need to provide regular and substantial care in order to receive an assessment, removing the need to request an assessment of their needs, placing a duty on local authorities to provide services to the carer following assessment when they meet the eligibility criteria, and introducing a new well-being principle. All this is very welcome, but parents of disabled children also need support. They have often struggled to establish rights as individuals on a par with other carers, and they are at particular risk of having their own rights overlooked as individuals. Too often, they are seen only as parents and their needs as carers are not identified or supported. This was summed up for me this weekend in a conversation I had with a parent carer known to me. He and his wife have been caring for their 30 year-old, very disabled son who is physically and mentally disabled. They have been caring for him for more than 30 years and have had the usual struggle in trying to find any support. When trying to access respite care when the wife, who has diabetes, was severely ill, they were told, “But you’re not carers. These rights don’t apply to you. You’re only parents”. They are not only parents. Normal parents do not have to look after their child and do everything for him for 30 years.

It is three times more costly to bring up a disabled child than a non-disabled child. Parent carers are more likely to be reliant on income-based state support, and 34% of sick or disabled children live in households where there is no adult in paid work. They are also more likely to suffer relationship breakdown and divorce, and they are three times more likely to suffer ill health and health breakdown than parents of non-disabled children. They are also commonly very isolated and unable to get support that fits the whole family.

The Law Commission, I remind the House, recommended that existing duties to assess parent carers should be amended to make them consistent with the adult social care statute. The Government, I am afraid, have so far failed to act on this recommendation. I tabled similar amendments during the Committee stage of the Care Bill and the Minister responded. However, the Government’s response did not address the disparity that will arise for parent carers, who will have lesser rights to an assessment of their need for support and will not have the same rights to support services as other carers.

These amendments try to address that. In brief, they include parent carers in the well-being clause. The intention of the first amendment is to include the parents of disabled children in the duty placed on local authorities by Clause 1 to promote the well-being of individuals. They also want to prevent parent carers’ need for support arising in the first place. Too often parent carers reach crisis point, leading to high-cost interventions. In addition to the negative impact on outcomes for the whole family caused by mental or physical breakdown in the parent, relationship breakdown and unemployment, there are also substantial costs to local authorities, commissioners and indeed to the economy. The costs of mental ill health, as we all know, are rocketing. The cost of family breakdown is estimated to range from £20 billion to £40 billion every year.

The other amendment includes parent carers in the duty to make the assessment. The Bill is making it easier for adults to receive a carer’s assessment by creating an automatic right to one and removing the requirement that they provide regular and substantial care. When I see that in legislation I want to stand up and cheer. That is a great development. However, unless similar changes are brought forward for the parents of disabled children, they will still need to request a carer’s assessment from their local authority and do not have a right to one unless they are providing regular and substantial care. This disparity means that parent carers will be the only carers to have these additional barriers to support in front of them. This amendment seeks to include parents of disabled children in the duty on local authorities in the Care Bill to assess carers, which creates a lower bar to assessment than the current legislation.

I hope that the Minister will look favourably on these amendments. Will the Government give assurances that parents of disabled children will not be left with lesser rights? How will the Government ensure parity of rights for parents of disabled children and how will the Government act to join together the Care Bill and the Children and Families Bill—being considered in the Moses Room as we speak—to ensure that the families of disabled children are able to access support? Will the Minister commit to working with the Children’s Minister to ensure that the rights of parent carers are not left behind? Will the Minister assure me that, having worked so effectively with the Department for Education to strengthen the rights for young carers, he will do so again to strengthen the rights of families with disabled children?

My Amendments 46 to 48 and 58 are about charging for carers’ services. They are supported by Carers UK and the Carers Trust. The current law includes the power to charge for meeting the needs of carers but very few local authorities use this power. As well as continuing to give local authorities the power to charge carers, the Bill includes a power to charge carers for arranging services for them. Local authority adult and social care budgets are under ever-increasing pressure and we must be concerned that carers may be looked to as a source of revenue. Carers already contribute a huge amount, often at great personal cost, as caring has a negative impact on their finances, health and well-being, and opportunities to engage in work and education. I make no apology for repeating the figure that I have quoted many times in your Lordships’ House—Carers UK has calculated that the contribution of carers is worth £119 billion a year in savings to the Exchequer. Charging a carer for support to meet their needs, often in order to help them continue in caring, risks being counterproductive by preventing carers accessing services and may even discourage carers seeking support. As a result, the adoption of charging policies would result in additional costs to local authorities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

As we were on a roll there with the Department of Health and the Department for Education working together so successfully on the young carers issue, I rather hoped that we might do it also with regard to parent carers. I am very grateful that the Minister has not entirely closed the door on that. I will read very carefully what he said, but I reserve the right to come back to this issue at Third Reading. I am very encouraged by what he said about taking a whole-family approach, but I believe that it should include parent carers as well as young carers. I am grateful to him, too, for saying that there would be more clarity in guidance about the charging issues. As I said, I will read what he said very carefully, but I reserve the right to bring some of these issues back at Third Reading. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 6 withdrawn.