Support for Carers

Ed Davey Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for unpaid carers and Carers Week 2021.

We are a nation of carers. Millions of people every day look after one or more loved ones—a family member or a friend, or someone who is elderly, disabled or sick. I want to thank and celebrate carers and to speak up for them and the many challenges so many carers face. To be clear, when I use the word “carer”, I am not talking about professional, paid carers—amazing though they are—or child carers and the important work of parents and childminders. Instead, I am focused on the millions of people working as unpaid carers in homes across our country, many of whom would not even call themselves carers. Millions of vulnerable adults and children depend on the efforts of our country’s carers, and yet the voice of these unpaid millions is rarely heard and listened to even less.

Covid has made the job of carers even more challenging. A recent survey by Carers UK found that 81% of carers are spending more time on their caring responsibilities during the pandemic, whether due to the needs of the person they are caring for increasing, or because the local care services they used to rely on have been reduced or closed. Despite all that, carers have too often been forgotten or ignored in so many ways. Take money. Right at the start of the pandemic, when the Chancellor put up universal credit by £20 a week, he refused to do the same for carer’s allowance. He is still resisting calls by Carers UK, the Liberal Democrats and others to put that right, despite the evidence that so many carers are in real financial distress made worse thanks to covid.

Take vaccinations. When the Government initially published the list of priority groups for vaccination in December, they left unpaid carers completely off the list, even though the case for including them is obvious, with so many caring for vulnerable people. Only after campaigning by carers organisations, the Liberal Democrats and carers themselves did Ministers finally U-turn. Even then, the effort to get the message out to carers and the vaccination services was, frankly, lamentable.

There are many more examples. The Government’s 80-page health and social care White Paper left out unpaid carers altogether, as did the Queen’s Speech in May. I am glad that the Health and Care Bill does at least include a requirement to involve carers in decisions about the people they care for, but the Bill does not go anywhere near far enough. There should be an explicit duty on the NHS to identify carers and promote their health and wellbeing, yet that it is sadly missing.

Here is the nub of the problem: the Government do not seem to understand that improving care is fundamental to improving health. Yes, there is debate about reforming and investing in social care to support the NHS, but I note that even there we are still waiting for the Government to publish their social reform proposals two years after the Prime Minister told us he had them ready to go. However, the link between health and care goes far wider than the relationship between social care providers and the NHS. It is shocking that that is still not properly recognised.

The reality for every family with an elderly, sick or disabled relative is this: the health and wellbeing of their loved one is not determined primarily by the hospital or the GP. So much of improving the nation’s health comes down to the quality of care that can be provided by family and friends. Yet millions of those unpaid carers do not even register in the core thinking and planning of the Department of Health and Social Care.

That is why this debate is so important. It is a chance for us to stand up for carers and say that they must not forgotten and ignored any longer. That is carers like Gayna, who looks after her two daughters with complex disabilities. Before the pandemic, Gayna got support from social services and her local carers’ centre, as well as a much-needed break when her girls were at college or with a youth worker. However, that all came to a halt when we entered lockdown, and Gayna’s amount of time spent on caring more than doubled.

Elaine had a similar experience as she cared for her husband, Mark, who is suffering with dementia. Throughout lockdown, Elaine struggled to cope without regular visits from Mark’s care workers. She deeply missed her respite time, and worried that Mark was not getting the mental stimulation he needed from the activities that he used to do with his care workers. She felt exhausted, stressed and like she had no one to turn to for advice or support. In Elaine’s own words:

“When you’re caring alone, you just have to keep going.”

That is all taking a huge toll, especially on the mental health of carers. Back before the pandemic, the 2019 health survey for England showed that for those carers undertaking 20 hours or more of care a week, the rate of depressive symptoms was double that of the rest of the population. I shudder to think of the state of mental health of many carers now, nearly 18 months into the pandemic.

Let us not forget Britain’s 800,000 young carers. The combination of lockdown, school closures and extra caring responsibilities has taken a toll on their academic progress and their mental health. Some have not been able to return to school, because they are worried about bringing the virus home with them, and about leaving their loved ones without care.

What should be done for our nation of carers? I have already mentioned the need to raise carer’s allowance by at least £20 a week, or £1,000 a year. So far, the Prime Minister has refused time and again to do that. He must do it now. One of the next most urgent things to do is to give carers a break. The survey by Carers UK found that 64% of carers have not been able to take any breaks from their caring role during the pandemic; 74% said they feel exhausted and worn out as a result of caring during covid; and 44% said they are reaching breaking point. Local authority budgets are already stretched way past breaking point, so the Government must give councils immediate emergency funding to offer every unpaid carer the support services that they need to take a weekly break.

Ministers must also provide more cash to councils to fund the voluntary sector’s work for carers. In my constituency, we have an amazing organisation called Kingston Carers’ Network, which is dedicated to improving the lives of carers in Kingston. From support groups to advice on benefits, from special projects for young carers and young adult carers to carers’ assessments and mentoring, Kingston Carers’ Network helps more than 4,000 carers in our borough. With a professional team of 21 and a volunteer group of 72, KCN provides extraordinary value for money. With a bit more help, it could do so much more, helping the thousands of carers locally it knows it has not yet reached.

KCN has risen to the challenge of covid, providing new services. One example is the telephone befriending service it set up in March last year. It recruited and trained 23 volunteers to provide one-to-one telephone support to carers. KCN believes that that simple, extremely cheap service has helped to reduce the anxiety and stress in many adult carers and prevented serious deterioration in carers’ mental health. I hope other colleagues have similar groups in their areas and I hope that the Minister will work with local authorities so that this critical work for carers can receive far more investment.

There is much more I want to say, but I am keen to let colleagues contribute, so that the Government can hear the huge cross-party support for our carers and realise that they need to do far more. Before I finish, however, I want to declare an interest—perhaps I should have done so earlier.

I am a carer and I have been at many stages of my life. My first time was as a young carer, starting aged 12. My dad died when I was four, so when my mum became terminally ill, when I was 12, the daily care fell largely to my brother and me, and finished when she died when I was 15. Later, I cared for my wonderful Nanna, my mum’s mum, organising her care and trying to make her last few years as comfortable as I could. And now as a father, my wife Emily and I care for our gorgeous disabled son John.

I think my experience as a carer is similar to that of millions of people. Caring for a close family member or friend can be rewarding and full of love, but it is far from glamorous and can be relentless and exhausting. That is why this debate is so important. Political debate in our country needs to reflect far better the experience and needs of our nation of carers. The Government need to do far more, especially because of covid, especially to support the nation’s health and the mental health of carers, and especially because our nation depends on those carers.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The debate can last until 4.45 pm. I am obliged to call the Front-Bench spokespeople no later than 12 minutes past 4. The guideline limits are 10 minutes for the SNP, 10 minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister. Ed Davey has three minutes at the end of the debate to sum up the proceedings. Until 12 minutes past 4, there are seven extremely distinguished Back Benchers seeking to contribute, and if we impose a limit of six minutes, everybody will be able to get in. I call Wera Hobhouse.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately]

Yes, I have heard that. I have also received correspondence about the situation of somebody who may be in full-time education and seeking eligibility for the carer’s allowance. Yes, I am absolutely listening to that. I truly recognise the pressures that carers experience, whether it is juggling caring with work or with education. I have spoken myself to younger carers in that situation as well.

I want to go further on identifying carers—overcoming some potential data protection issues—and on trying to bring together our data sources, so that we have a clearer sense of who carers are and so that we will be able to contact them to offer support. During the pandemic, I found that it was not possible to write to all the carers in the country and say, “This is what is available to you.” I want us to go further on having the best data that we can.

[Ed Davey]

What the Minister is saying about identifying carers is absolutely critical for future Government policy on carers. It is why we talked about putting an explicit duty on the NHS in the Health and Care Bill, which is before Parliament. That would be a real step forward. Is the Minister willing to meet me and carers’ organisations to discuss the critical issue of how we can work together with the health service and local authorities, so that we can identify the carers in our communities?

[Helen Whately]

I am very happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman to talk about that. It is about the technicalities of data, data sitting in different places, and how we can overcome that so that we have a better and common information source. Yes, I am absolutely happy to meet him.

I will come back to some of the things that we did during the pandemic, because I want to cover the topics that have been raised in the debate. We published guidance specifically for carers to try to support them through the pandemic, including on maintaining their own health and wellbeing. We provided PPE for unpaid carers who live separately from those for whom they care, in line with the clinical advice on when it is appropriate for a carer to use PPE. Crucial to all that was drawing on the experiences and insights of carers, including young carers, during the pandemic. We held a series of roundtable discussions in order to do that. Young carers frequently fly under the radar of services and community networks that would otherwise help them.

We provided extra funding to charities, including £500,000 to the Carers Trust in order to provide support to those who experienced loneliness during the pandemic, and over £150,000 to Carers UK so that it could extend its helpline opening hours in order to provide information and support to unpaid carers. We have supported initiatives for young carers, including providing over £11 million to the Sea, Hear, Respond programme, which ran from June 2020 until March 2021, in order to support more vulnerable children and young people.

We have also worked to give extra support to young carers in education. During the national lockdown, schools and colleges remained open for the children of critical workers and vulnerable children, including young carers. I recognise that if a young carer looks after somebody who is more vulnerable to covid, they will be more worried about going to school, so I am determined to ensure that, as part of our catch-up programme for children, some of the £3 billion education recovery package can be used to support young carers who have missed out on school.

I want to talk about day services, which provide essential respite for carers. It is so important that carers, particularly those who do high-intensity care, have time to see a dentist or doctor, to go shopping or to do something for themselves. Such respite is so important, and the day service or respite care is of great value to the individual who attends it. I was truly disappointed to read Carers UK’s new research report, “Breaks or breakdown”, which was published during Carers Week. It said that

“72% of carers have not had any breaks from their caring”

during the pandemic. However, many respite services and day services have not been fully operational for much of the last 16 months. I want to see the reopening of such services. That is one reason why, as part of the infection control fund, we have given nearly £1.5 billion to social care during the pandemic. One use of that fund has been to support the reopening of day services.

I know we can go further. Just last week, I spoke to local authority leaders and emphasised to them the importance of reopening day services and respite services, and I urged them to take advantage of the support that is on offer. I personally commissioned two surveys of day service provision—one last October and one in spring this year. During that period, that provision has increased; the situation in the recent report was better than last year’s, but it is not yet back to the pre-pandemic level. I will continue to work with adult directors of social services, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and local authorities to fully understand the challenges in getting day services back to the level that they were at before.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Davey]

I thank every Member who has contributed. Members have made some really powerful speeches, and I think that carers in their constituencies are very grateful for the work that they do as parliamentarians.

I will single out, rather unfairly perhaps, two colleagues who have spoken, for different reasons—first, my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone). The story about his constituent needing an extra diaper a day for his mother brought home to us all what we are talking about when we are talking about carers: the stresses, the fact that they are providing very basic care—whether it is dealing with toileting, doing washing, dressing, eating or drinking—to ensure that a loved one can have a quality of life, and how the emotional impact of that can affect people. I am grateful for his contribution, which I think brought us down to earth on what we are talking about.

I also thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) for talking about the need to identify young carers. The Minister picked that up, agreeing that we need to talk about that more generally. There is an issue about helping people to identify themselves, because many people do not understand that they are carers. They see it as just looking after their wife or husband, son or daughter, or mother or father, but we need to identify them to ensure that they are getting the support that they need, whether for their own mental health, respite care or whatever it might be.

We also need to ensure, as we plan health services, social services, or whatever it may be, that we have proper information. The census, when it comes out, may refresh the figures of 2011. Many colleagues were involved in the efforts to encourage people, when they took the census, to identify themselves as carers. I would probably multiply whatever figures come from the census because I am not sure that all carers will identify themselves as such. However, if we can do that more effectively I think we can bring home to policymakers how significant the issue is. It has been massively underplayed by Government after Government, so I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sheffield Central. He mentioned young carers. I cannot see, for example, why that cannot be central to the annual school census. That is a pretty easy thing to do. I am very happy to work with him and others to try to work with the Government to bring that about.

If we value carers for the work that they do and properly identify them, I think we can come together and really improve the support that we give them, which is so essential. In so doing, we can dramatically improve the health and wellbeing of the people we are elected to serve, which is utterly crucial. May I end, Mr Hollobone, by thanking everybody—

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I am afraid not. The sitting stands adjourned.