Social Care Funding

Emma Hardy Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles.

I think we all accept that there is an ever-increasing demand for social care. In fact, when I was looking at data for this speech, I found out that 5,000 people a day are trying to access social care, according to NHS Digital. However, we sometimes forget the human being behind the figures, and although I was not going to use this story in my speech, it has stayed with me, and I want to share it with Members.

A couple of weeks ago, I knocked on a family’s door. I was talking to the woman there, and she told me about her sister. She was really keen for me to read some research about why adults with learning difficulties die earlier than adults without, when there is no physical reason for that to happen. She told me that, despite being the younger sister, she had helped her older sister to learn how to speak and that, when she was younger, she had helped to look after her. She used to visit her, and they were very close, despite the fact that her sister had numerous learning difficulties.

Two years ago, however, the sister died, at the age of 51. The woman was clearly still very upset. She said her sister had died because there was no reason for her to get up any more. There was no reason for her to get out of bed; there was nothing for her to do. She said that her sister had been involved years ago in volunteer work placements, and that she would get really excited when she earned her money and was given a bit of a wage at the end of the day—she felt like she had a reason to get up. The woman told me there used to be activity co-ordinators in the care homes, who went in and did work and activities such as gardening and all sorts of other things. However, over the past few years, everything has gone. She said there was no reason for her sister to want to be alive, so she stayed in bed. Her condition degenerated, and she developed serious health conditions, which resulted in her passing away at only the age of 51.

We sometimes forget about those things. We talk about care, and we ask whether 15 minutes is enough to go and care for someone. It might be enough to stick a meal in the microwave, and it might be enough to give someone their medication, but is it enough to care? It feels like we have lost the caring from our caring system. We have lost the time to actually sit down and be with each other and to have that human contact and human care.

As automation increases, it feels like that human interaction could disappear even more. For example, there are fantastic new homes that are run by voice activation. People can tell them to open the curtains or the drawers. All these advances in technology are a reason to decrease the amount of human interaction, and I worry about that. I worry about where we are going as a society. We are replacing humans with automation, and we are replacing caring with just functioning. If feels like we have developed a system where people function but do not get cared for.

We need a fundamental rethink. The time for tinkering around the edges has definitely ended. I am obviously pleased with the Labour party’s proposals for free personal care. I hope we look at giving those free personal carers the time to care, and give the quality and status to carers, so that instead of their being dismissed as insignificant people on the minimum wage they are given that quality and status. We should view our carers in the same way as we view our nurses—as people giving a quality service and making a difference to our society.

It is time for us all to put the care back into caring, raise the status of the profession and give people the time they need, and I am very proud that that is exactly what the Labour party intends to do.