Social Care

Baroness Uddin Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I am happy to provide that assurance. Inevitably, there is economic modelling that will need to be updated from previous reviews. It is the reason that, in particular, Dame Kate Barker and Sir Andrew Dilnot have been invited to play a role as well as others, as I am sure the noble Baroness knows. We do not want to have to reinvent the wheel and we know what we want to achieve. The difficulty is that, as Governments have found throughout the years, it is easier to say that than to do it. We all want to get through that process and hopefully achieve it this time.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, in the light of all the previous comments I want to raise a couple of issues. I welcome having another look at social care in general and the fact that the Minister says that the Government are looking at integrated care. That is not the experience of men, women and children on the ground; I declare an interest in that I have a son with autism but I receive no service, so I do not really need to declare that. I think an awful lot of parents are like me and my husband: their families manage it themselves. The level of support for social care for adults with autism or a learning disability has been decimated over the last 10 years in various ways. How will this new approach to social care ensure that there is some reverse, so that there is dignity and honour for those individuals who go through the social care process and system?

Does the Minister agree that it is really important to ensure that there will be some reparation, almost, for the loss of services in the past so that adults, particularly those with a learning disability and autism, have access to services such as simply going to the library? My noble friend Lord Howarth mentioned the arts earlier but there is also music, as was pointed out earlier in the Chamber. There is a variety of ways in which social care is now more innovative, and that access should be available to service receivers in all parts.

My final point is about the communities that do not automatically understand the new approach or the latest fads and reports. They do not follow the system. How will we ensure that all kinds of communities understand that there is an approach to integrated social care, and that they will not be left behind simply because they do not understand the system or are not au fait with it, or if they are not politically correct and shouting the loudest?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness put it beautifully in saying that the people we are talking about, who are on the receiving end of care, need to be treated with dignity and honour. I wholeheartedly agree with her.

I will separate integrated care into older people and working-age adults, as the noble Baroness did. On older people—and on health and care in general—I encourage her again to look at the five-year forward view and the plan for integration. In the recent Budget, we funded more than £200 million of capital programmes to help move a handful of local areas to what are called accountable care systems. That is where you look at the health of a population, which is quite an important step forward towards integrated care. I agree with her that that is not necessarily the everyday experience.

On disabled working-age adults, we may talk about the ageing and growing population but I believe that they are the fastest-growing group of care users. There is of course excellent work going on at the local authority level; I had the privilege many years ago to chair a special school in Wandsworth and saw the fantastic work it did with a peripatetic autism service there. But I know that there is huge variation, which is why the parallel programme of work that I talked about is so important.

Finally, the noble Baroness talked about hard-to-reach communities, and I could not agree more on that. One of the ways of reaching them is to engage with those who give voice to those communities. I would be delighted to discuss that with her, to make sure that we are listening to every voice we can as we move ahead.