National Strategy for Self-Care

Debate between Charles Walker and Peter Dowd

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be under your stewardship, Sir Charles. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth) for securing the debate.

We all know that people have self-cared in one fashion or another for thousands of years. Personally, I think that self-care starts with mental health, which can often be forgotten in strategies. The old Hippocratic approach was to be in a good frame of mind: a healthy mind produces a healthy body, and that is as pertinent today as it was more than 2,000 years ago. A self-care strategy should take a holistic approach that covers lifestyle, diet, as my right hon. Friend has said, and exercise, and a person’s state of employment is also a factor. They must all be taken into account by strategies dealing with self-care, because this is about not just people’s physical health, but their social and economic health.

On the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) about self-care, I do not think that self-care means self-isolation as far as healthcare is concerned. It is about sharing care. It is also important that people use the healthcare system responsibly. Some referrals to GPs and hospitals could be considered inappropriate—I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley touched on that—with people turning up and putting a strain on the system. We have a personal responsibility to ensure that the health service is used in the most appropriate way. That is not to dissuade people or tell them not to go to the GP, but it is a factor that must be taken into account. There must be a system that assists in self-care so that people feel empowered and, crucially, safe, as the hon. Member for Glasgow Central referred to, when making decisions about self-care.

We have also got to take into account those people who cannot self-care and need support from family or carers who are, in effect, proxy self-carers, if I may use that phrase. A strategy must also include a safety net for people who are not in a position to self-care as much as they would like.

The World Health Organisation has an excellent prospectus on self-care. It straddles many different cultures and countries, but broadly talks about self-management, the use of self-testing and, importantly, self-awareness, which goes back to one or two of my earlier points.

I welcome the 2019 clinical consensus statement on self-care, which sets out seven recommendations, as touched on by my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley. More recently, “Realising the potential: Developing a blueprint for a self-care strategy for England” sets out nine themes.

In the current climate there are huge stresses on the health service and on people’s mental health and, subsequently, their physical health, partly because of covid and partly because of their individual social and economic circumstances. A care strategy must take into account societal movement and those social and economic factors that impinge on people’s health, so that, in helping people to self-care, we must also have a net in place to ensure that that self-care is safe.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

I will call the shadow Minister shortly. There is usually a five-minute limit for the Opposition spokesperson, but as we have quite a long time left, if the hon. Lady would like to speak for longer, she can do so, although she is under no obligation to do that. I am sure the Minister would not mind either.