Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Munn Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

10. What steps he is taking to ensure that people receiving care at home funded by the NHS are involved in making the arrangements for that care.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)]

Our ambition is to enable shared decision making for all NHS patients. We expect people who are eligible for NHS continuing care funding to be fully involved in discussions about their care. Subject to the results of the current personal health budget pilots, everyone eligible for NHS continuing health care, including many people receiving care at home, will have the right to ask for a personal health budget, including a direct payment, from April 2014.

[Meg Munn]

I have received a letter from one of my constituents who has had direct payments for 15 years under social services. Following a stay in hospital, she was moved on to health funding, and her life has changed dramatically for the worse. She says that she no longer has any choice in who cares for her and finds it hard to find the right people with whom she feels comfortable. She concludes:

“I’m tired of being bullied. I’m just miserable.”

Will the Minister do something to bring forward the measures more quickly, so that people who have been directing their own care under social services can have the same quality of life and the same choices that they have become used to?

[Paul Burstow]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady’s constituent, and with the hon. Lady. We need to ensure that, as soon as possible, the benefits and the control that direct payments give to individuals in social care are available to people in regard to their long-term health care and particularly to continuing health care. It is realistic to say that we can roll this out nationwide by 2014, but I know that the hon. Lady is having discussions with the authorities in Sheffield, and I encourage her to carry on those conversations about the way in which people can use the current arrangements to access those facilities.