Carers Action Plan 2018-20: Supporting Carers Today

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, for securing this debate, for her introduction and for reminding us how personal caring is to most of us. Most of us will either be a carer, have been a carer, expect to be a carer or certainly know someone who is. That is hardly surprising since, today, 6,000 new people, new carers, will take up their role throughout the United Kingdom—there are 6,000 every day.

I have been involved with the carers movement for more than 30 years, from a time—I know it is difficult to remember now—when the contribution of so-called “informal” carers was barely acknowledged. Indeed, the word was not even in the dictionary and was frequently mispronounced as “career”. So I have witnessed and been involved in many initiatives, such as the Carers Actions Plan, which aim to bring about important changes in the lives of United Kingdom’s 6 million carers.

In the mid-1990s, there were three Private Members’ Bills, each supported by the Governments of the day, which first gave carers statutory rights. I had the interesting experience of first being a campaigner lobbying Parliament on the first of those Bills and, by the time of the third one, being a legislator helping to work to pass it. Much later, there was what we call the “great leap forward” of the Care Act 2014, which further strengthened those rights and about which we were all extremely hopeful.

Alongside legislation there have been developments in strategy. The first national carers strategy was published almost 20 years ago and focused on improving the quality of life for carers through improved support and care. In 2006 came the New Deal for Carers and an updated strategy was published in 2008. This promised that, by 2018—this year, I remind your Lordships—the vision in that 2008 document would be universally recognised, so that carers would be valued as fundamental to strong families and communities and, specifically, as the document said:

“Support will be tailored to meet individuals’ needs, enabling carers to maintain a balance between their caring responsibilities and a life outside caring, whilst enabling the person they support to be a full and equal citizen”.


Few would claim that this vision has been achieved, especially not the carer I spoke to on Monday—a woman in her 70s caring for a partner in his 90s. “You get so lonely”, she said. “People stop calling because he’s so difficult. I’ve lost all confidence and feel I just lurch from one crisis to another with no one caring about me”. No wonder that in the Carers UK survey, published for Carers Week, 70% of respondents said that their own mental health had been affected as a direct result of their caring. In addition, more than 60% said that their physical health had worsened.

Let me return to history. Little attention was given to the carers issue between 2010 and 2016, when the Department of Health sent out a call for evidence in anticipation of an updated carers strategy. Nearly 7,000 carers responded, but the strategy did not appear—caught up, no doubt, in the unexpected general election and the problem of social care suddenly becoming political dynamite. The Government recognised that this delay was causing much concern and, to their great credit, decided on an interim measure, the action plan, responding to many of the concerns which were expressed in the call for evidence.

The document is in fact more of a summary list of work being done or planned than an action plan, but it has none the less been welcomed by the carers sector. Three things in particular have found favour. First, there is the emphasis on the importance of cross-government working, recognising that the needs of carers go far beyond the remit of the Department of Health and Social Care. Other department Ministers have signed up to the action plan and have agreed to a core plan of delivery for the next two years.

The second thing that has been welcomed is exploring the possibility of dedicated employment rights for carers alongside the existing employment rights, mentioned by the noble Baroness, such as the right to request flexible working. This is further recognition that one of the most helpful things we can do for carers is to enable them to remain in paid work as long as possible or to return to employment at the end of their caring period, thus helping to prevent the poverty which is so often associated with caring.

The third welcome thing is the carers innovation fund, also mentioned by the noble Baroness, to develop creative and cost-effective models of support. This is linked with the implementation of the Care Act 2014, which, while it had great aspirations, has proved to be less helpful than we had hoped with regard to carers assessments or access to breaks, largely because of financial pressures on local authorities. The proposed single assessment process, which is being trialled in Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, will take into account the health and well-being of carers, as was always intended in the Care Act.

These initiatives are very welcome, but—and there are some big buts—the issue of additional resources to fund support for carers is conspicuously absent, which has been greeted with disappointment by the sector. The financial problems of carers themselves, which always feature very strongly when you talk to any carer, are also largely ignored. Carers constantly report severe financial problems because of the inadequacy of the carer’s allowance, the complete inability to amass any kind of savings, and the increasing pressure to pay for any support service.

A carer I met last week, who is a 24/7 carer for her 89 year-old husband—she is 80—said:

“My local council is now charging me for the two hours’ respite they give me each week”—


that is two hours out of her 24/7 caring. She continues:

“They say I can afford it. I can’t, so we will have to do without it”.

It is hardly surprising that her physical and mental health is, as she says,

“getting worse by the day”.

She also describes herself as “confined by love”, which is a reminder that caring takes place in an existing relationship of love or duty, or a combination of the two.

Some groups of carers are given more attention than others in the action plan. As it happens, we understand the needs of young carers very well nowadays, although there is a question about whether there should be any such thing as a young carer, since if proper support services were given, they would not need to step up to the plate. However, the needs of older carers, especially of spouse and partner carers, who often provide mutual support in an increasingly fragile arrangement, remain relatively overlooked and poorly understood. However, I am pleased that the Minister is committed to a twice-yearly review, and we must ensure that this continues to give momentum to a strategy for which carers have been waiting so long.

In my 30 years’ experience, successive Governments have identified and signed up to the need to value and support carers. Given that most of us will be carers or cared for at some time in our lives, we all have selfish reasons for welcoming any such commitment. But as members of society too we must welcome it, since carers save all of us an estimated £132 billion a year—I am sure that your Lordships did not expect me to omit that statistic, because I quote it on every possible occasion—which would otherwise have to be found from taxation. Realising, as it now appears we must, that we shall all have to pay increased taxes to fund the NHS, we presume that this has to extend to social care and support for carers too.

The Carers UK survey showed that almost half the respondents were not sure whether they would be able to continue taking up and fulfilling their carers commitments if they did not get more support. That is a statistic to frighten us all. It is a time bomb, as I have said in previous exchanges in your Lordships’ House. No Government in all my 30 years of working on this issue have, I believe, had such an opportunity as this current one—as they produce their Green Paper on social care so eagerly awaited by us all—to make carers central to the social care strategy, as the Secretary of State has promised.

Sadly, we have learned from the recent Statement that we will have to wait even longer for that Green Paper than previously anticipated. The action plan, welcome though it is, is insufficient on its own. The Government themselves have described it as merely a bridge to the social care Green Paper. As Sheila, a carer I was in touch with recently, said: “Is that all? What took them so long? There does not seem much meat in it to me. Am I missing something?”. The Minister must assure the House today that a more fundamental commitment and achievable, very specific objectives will the follow this action plan so that carers do not continue to miss out.