Social Care (Local Sufficiency) and Identification of Carers Bill

Debate between Hywel Francis and Barbara Keeley

Friday 7th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley]

I very much agree, and I am sure that that is why the Bill has received such strong support from Employers for Carers.

Other countries have put in place development strategies for home care. In France, the first phase of its development strategy for the home care sector led to a growth of 100,000 jobs year on year. However, even after the worldwide recession, such strategies have led to 50,000 more jobs there each year.

There is a real need for care and support services to enable carers and disabled people to work, but the social care picture in England is one of growing need, shrinking provision, and totally inadequate information and advice about what is available. I have discussed the cuts to social care budgets during previous debates on social care funding.

[Dr Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful case. Is she aware of good practice in Scotland and Wales that England should be following?

[Barbara Keeley]

I have not followed that as closely as I might have done, so I hope that we will hear from my hon. Friend later about the practice in Wales. However, we have much to learn from other countries.

It is important that we bear in mind the shrinking provision of social care because we know that demand is growing. Since 2010, local councils’ adult social care budgets have been cut by more than £1 billion, and a further £1 billion of cuts is expected. The number of vulnerable older and disabled people who have their home care services fully paid for by their local authority has fallen by 11% over the past two years. According to a survey by the Care and Support Alliance, services have been cut to 24% of disabled adults. Research by Age UK shows that cuts to council budgets mean increased fees for services—in fact, service fees have increased by 13% over two years. Almost half of all local councils are charging more, or making new charges, for home help or day care. One in six councils has reduced personal budgets for care packages, and almost half of all councils have frozen the rates that they pay for residential care. In addition, the fees for both residential care and nursing home care have increased by 5% on average during the past year.

Those are important statistics, but sadly they are not routinely gathered so that they can be scrutinised by, for example, the Health Committee. They were mainly gathered through freedom of information requests by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) and various organisations. Local authorities do not have a full picture of local care provision, particularly that needed by the 80% of care users who are self-funding. Those self-funders—people whose assets exceed the means test for local authority support—spend £5.5 billion a year on care, with top-ups to statutory services costing them another £1.15 billion. It is vital that we have a better and more complete picture of social care provision, including that very large amount for self-funders.

Clauses 1 and 2 introduce a strategic duty on local authorities in England to ensure that sufficient social care services exist in their local area to meet the care needs of disabled people and carers. They seek to move towards local authorities having a total and accurate picture of what is purchased and provided in their area. Existing duties on local authorities relate only to those for whom the local authority has a statutory responsibility—disabled people and carers who meet eligibility criteria and who do not exceed means-testing thresholds.

It might be argued that the Government’s draft Care and Support Bill introduces a duty on local authorities to establish and maintain the provision of information and advice relating to care and support for adults and carers. The draft Bill says that a local authority must promote the efficient and effective operation in its area of a market in services for meeting care and support needs. However, that duty does not cover an assessment of local sufficiency, and it is that picture that can truly help carers and disabled people, particularly in terms of working, as we have just discussed.

Andrew Dilnot, in his 2011 report, set out the need to place duties on local authorities to provide information, advice and assistance services in their area, and to stimulate and shape the market for services. Moving to embrace a duty to develop a full picture of care and support services, and to assess the sufficiency of those services, will assist local authorities in developing their role as market shapers.

Clause 2 includes a duty to promote sufficiency of the supply of care, which, as we have discussed, would bring a new focus on the importance of social care in promoting and enabling work for disabled people and unpaid family carers. Carers UK has analysed local authority joint strategic needs assessments, which is really the only assessment that we have, but this analysis has shown that the majority of those assessments do not link care provision with work, so clause 2 would link well with Government strategies around work for carers and people with disabilities.

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[Barbara Keeley]

I am sure that there are similarities. This field of work is opening up, but much more needs to be done.

It is interesting to talk to organisations such as the Carers Trust and the Children’s Society, which run the young carers projects, about identification, which my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) mentioned. Young carers are already eligible for assessment under carers legislation and as “children in need” under the Children Act 2004, but very few of them are identified or ever assessed for support. In supporting the Bill, the Carers Trust says that

“clear duties on local authorities and further and higher education institutions to identify and support young carers will help ensure that inappropriate caring is prevented or reduced so that young carers can enjoy the same opportunities and outcomes as other children and young people.”

[Dr Francis]

Does my hon. Friend agree that as the Bill progresses it will be important for the Minister to look at the excellent work that Crossroads Care did in the recent past in supporting young carers through projects of the kind that she has described?

[Barbara Keeley]

I am sure that it will. The difficulty with capturing this in the Bill, as in any legislation, is that it spreads across Departments. It is something for us to work on, and there is much to be done.

Young carers do not enjoy the same opportunities and outcomes as other children and young people. The Carers Trust tells us that young carers frequently experience worry, stress, anxiety, depression and feelings of loss and panic, as well as mental health problems and risk of self-harm. They fear for the condition of the person they care for, but they often have more fear of being taken into care. They feel angry and resentful because they have such responsibilities, yet they are not recognised. Most of all, they experience a lack of time for play, leisure and sport, and miss out on social time with their own age group. A serious consideration for all of us, given that we are talking about 8% of the secondary school population, is that a caring role also leads to missed educational opportunities, poor educational outcomes, and, later on, reduced employment opportunities. Over a quarter of young carers aged 11 to 16 miss school owing to caring, and that figure rises to 40% when the parent is mentally ill or misusing drugs or alcohol. Young adult carers are twice as likely as their peers not to be in education, employment or training. It is common for them to move into full-time caring after they finish compulsory education, particularly if they are receiving no support.

Clause 6 would place a duty on colleges of further and higher education to identify students who are carers and to have in place policies of support for them. When we included this proposal in the Bill, I did not realise that it was quite ground-breaking and new. A report in 2008 by Young Carers International for the Princess Royal Trust for Carers reported that there were 290,000 young adult carers in the UK. The figures move between 300,000 and 800,000; nobody really has any idea. The report said that apart from statistics that could be obtained from the census,

“Little is known about young adult carers aged 16-24 in the UK”

and:

“Information is sparse about the issues and challenges that they face due to being carers”.”

Young adult carers at university or college have to balance giving care with their academic studies and learning. Some do this by caring at a distance, returning home at weekends or holidays to provide care, but others have to balance care and study by continuing to live at home and travelling to their local university so that they can maintain their regular caring roles. The report told us that none of the young adult carers at university it surveyed was aware of any specific carer support being available at their university. Similarly, they were often unaware of local services for carers that might be able to support them because, sadly, those services have not reached out to university student populations. There is a mismatch in that regard.

That was the situation in 2008. It is interesting that only this year greater awareness of the needs of student carers seems to be developing. The Fair to Care campaign in Scotland is lobbying for the development of carers’ strategies in universities.

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[Barbara Keeley]

I value my hon. Friend’s support given his knowledge of passing previous measures. May I take this opportunity to say that I intend to press the Bill to a Division and have no intention of withdrawing as it was suggested earlier I should do? As I said in the conclusion to my speech, the measures are needed by carers of all ages. That is why I introduced the Bill and I am grateful for his support.

[Dr Francis]

As a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on carers, I warmly welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. I am sure the group endorses her decision.

As I said, the Bill has massive support throughout the country. There is considerable support from employers, but—this has not been said—there has also been considerable support historically, as there is currently, from trade unions, and particularly the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, which has always campaigned for carers. I warmly welcome the endorsement of the Bill by Caroline Waters OBE, director of people and policy for BT group and chair of Employers for Carers. Furthermore, the Association of Directors of Social Services and many individual directors of social services have endorsed the Bill.

A number of hon. Members have spoken of the importance of young carers and supporting young people going through university. I commend the work of the Open university, which has identified carers as a target group to support. I am very pleased with the work done by my good friend Rob Humphreys, the excellent director of the Open university in Wales, who is organising a conference on carers and higher education, which will take place later this year.

The Prime Minister only this week spoke of the importance of all Government Departments focusing on regenerating the economy. What better way to achieve that than by identifying our valued, unpaid carers so as to assist them back to work or into training, or by supporting our young carers in their studies? He could do so today by supporting this admirable Bill.