Social Care and the Role of Carers

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD) [V}]

My Lords, I will focus my remarks on the wonderful work done by voluntary and community groups during the pandemic—as well as the rest of the time—particularly in the area of social care. We owe them an enormous debt of gratitude.

I declare an interest as a trustee of Community Action Suffolk, the infrastructure body for the county. I am also a member of the advisory body of the Institute for Volunteering Research in Norwich. I can recommend that all Peers with an interest in these matters take a look at the research being done there.

Volunteers bring a user-based focus and use their personal commitment, time and skills to make the social care system more resilient. In this way, society becomes more resilient. However, they are complementary to—and not a substitute for—properly resourced public services and professional staff. Volunteers can play a significant role, but government needs to use the existing knowledge and evidence as the basis on which to build effective and sustainable volunteering efforts.

Covid-19 has highlighted much of what we already knew from this evidence. The voluntary sector best supports individuals when it is linked with statutory services and not kept disconnected from them. A key achievement of Community Action Suffolk throughout the pandemic has been to have a seat at the table to ensure that the response of all the voluntary organisations in the county is dovetailed with statutory services. That way, we have been able to link volunteers with shielded individuals, support food banks, assist school testing programmes, and much more.

The Institute for Volunteering Research has shown just how important these infrastructure bodies are. As the demand for their services and the volunteer base grew, their role became more important. But not all areas have these. They are underfunded and not universal.

As people return to work, the sustainability of the volunteer base is in question. Older people are re-evaluating their lives in the same way as are so many of us. Further research by the IVR has shown that attempts by national government since 1948 to direct volunteer efforts centrally have been largely ineffective. Further research by the ESRC has shown how the devolved Administrations have taken a significantly different approach during the pandemic.

Levelling up should not just be about infrastructure in certain geographic areas. There are huge variations in social capital, access to community assets and people’s capacity to help one another. Government departments need to use the available evidence and consider working with funders to create an observation study to find a clearer picture of the disparities which exist and to build a response to them.