Support for Carers

Liz Twist Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I thank the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) for securing this hugely important debate.

Last month, during Carers Week, I had the very great privilege of visiting Gateshead Carers, situated in the constituency of my friend and neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), but covering my constituency of Blaydon. Its chief executive, Steve Cowen, tells me that there are 25,000-plus unpaid carers across the borough of Gateshead, and that they save the council, the NHS and all of us over £500 million in care costs per year. That is an incredible figure. While I was there, I met some of the carers it works with and heard about their lives, the situations that they face, and what they need to make their lives and those of the people they care for better.

I met Ian, a carer who had been working on the association’s allotment, welcoming the chance to have some time away. Sadly, covid-19 restricted his ability to get away from home, but he is ready to get back to that now. I met Irene and Trisha, befriender and befriended, who have been talking together for over a year during lockdown, and met for the very first time on the day that I met them. Trisha had been an unpaid carer for her husband and, even after he went into residential care, was spending all her days with him in the residential home. Covid-19 meant that she was no longer able to do that. She was really missing it, and welcomed the chance to strike up that new friendship.

I met Lynne, who is a carer for her husband, an army veteran—but not so old—who told us that it had taken her some time to understand that his health meant that she was a carer. “I was just his wife”, she said, “it’s what you do.” She has realised that she is an unpaid carer, and like many unpaid carers, there comes a time when the caring takes over from what other paid work she has. She is making a huge contribution, and thankfully is now receiving support from Gateshead Carers Association. Stuart had become involved in Gateshead Carers Association as a carer, and now lends his skills to that association as a trustee while still being an unpaid carer.

I could mention so many other people: constituents who have found that they have become unpaid carers, whether for a child with disabilities, for someone who has developed dementia, or for someone who, because of illness or age, younger or older, needs that full-time caring support. Many of those carers—dare I say it—were the 1950s-born women who saw their retirement age changed as a result of legislation. They have looked after parents who need care and have given up work, only to find that when the person they care for dies they are not entitled to their pension, and have been left destitute. Covid-19 has made this worse. Less access to external support and company increases isolation, but let us be clear that, even before covid-19, things were not easy for carers, so we do not want to return to the situation pre-covid. We want to address those pre-existing conditions. Of course, for those caring for children with disabilities, the pressures have been even greater than they were before covid.

I want to say a word on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who hoped to be here, but is unable to. She has told me what she would have said: “I want to talk about the impact that lifting coronavirus restrictions will have on carers for people who are clinically extremely vulnerable. I have heard from unpaid carers who say they are at a loss as to how they and the people they care for are ever going to be part of society as restrictions go and they follow the clinically extremely vulnerable guidance.”

Katy Styles is a campaigner for the We Care campaign. She cares for her husband, who has motor neurone disease. She says:

“I am worried that unpaid carers’ lives will be further pushed back into the shadows and we will essentially live a twilight existence, not engaging with others, trying to stay safe, not taking any risks and being not only unheard but unseen by the rest of society. There is no end to this. No road map for us, just the very edge of the map and no coming back from there. It’s particularly tough for those caring for people with dementia or Learning Disabilities. If you are Clinically Extremely Vulnerable we know the vaccine works differently than from the whole population. We will effectively be back to shielding, but with no support and whilst the rest of the country this time cracks on.”

In the time left, I will talk about some of the things we need. Unpaid carers need proper carers’ breaks and respite care. As we have heard from other Members, we need an increase in the carers’ allowance: £67 is just not enough for the people who devote all that time. Most of all, we need a proper care plan for adult social care, so that the people for whom they are caring are able to access the support they need, and the unpaid carers can also access support. I hope that the Minister will be able to talk to us today about what would be done for carers under the adult social care system—a system that needs to be properly funded, not just to be a cap on how much an individual spends.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Liz Twist]

I very much welcome the efforts made to reopen day services. However, will the Minister accept that many local authorities already find their social care funding stretched incredibly hard and so find it difficult to maintain some of those services? Does the Minister accept that there is a funding issue here?

[Helen Whately]

Of course, there are financial pressures across public services, and more widely across our economy we face an extremely challenging time, but we have given significant extra funding to local authorities to support them through the pandemic. That is why I urge them to prioritise this issue. I emphasise the importance of the carer’s needs assessment that local authorities carry out, because that is such a crucial way of identifying what support a carer may need for themselves and their wellbeing, including the need for respite and taking a break from caring, and then making sure that that happens.