Young Carers Support

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for young carers.

It is a privilege to move the motion with you in the Chair, Mr Owen. One of the special things about being a Member of Parliament is the opportunity we are given to find out more about the extraordinary people in the communities that we represent. Following my election back in 2010, there are few more extraordinary people who I have come into contact with than the young carers I have come to know.

John, for example, is 17 years old now and started caring for his mum when he was 10 years old. She has fibromyalgia. John says:

“This causes her muscles and bones to become weak and most of the time she is unable to walk or even get out of bed. As a young carer, I help my mum with shopping and things inside and outside of the house. I don’t get much time to go out with my mates or have much time to myself. My life is different because I am looking after my mum, making sure she is taking her tablets and eating and drinking.”

John was one of eight young people from Sheffield who I took to meet the Prime Minister last May. I thank the Prime Minister—she has one or two other things on right now—for finding time to sit down for half an hour with us. Another one of the group was Holly. She is now 14 years old but she started caring for her mum and her sister around the age of four or five. Her mum has an underactive thyroid and her sister has a reflux in her right kidney. Holly says of their life:

“I don’t get much time to be a child or to spend time with friends. I don’t mind, but it sometimes gets really frustrating if I can’t sit down for five minutes or so. My life is different to young people who aren’t carers, because I struggle a lot with life and have people to care for. They get to be kids and live their life. I still get to live my life but I have to an adult and I have to be very careful. The highs are that I get to spend lots of time with my mum and my sister. The lows are that I have no other family around, so it is just the three of us. It is very painful for me and very emotional to have to watch my sister screaming in agony.”

Holly and John are the lucky ones, because they have made contact with Sheffield Young Carers, of which I am proud to be a patron. They are getting tremendous support and the opportunity to meet and share their experience with others in the same position, but most young carers are hidden from view. One in 12 children and young people is taking on mid to high-level care for a family member. Their average age is just 12 years old, the average annual income for their families is £5,000 lower than others, 68% are bullied at school, 26% are being bullied about their caring role, 45% report a mental health problem, they achieve nine grades lower at GCSE and they are four times more likely to drop out of further and higher education. The right support is vital, and we owe them nothing less.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

This is such an important issue, and I am glad that my hon. Friend is raising it. He has said, quite rightly, that in many cases young carers are unidentified within the system. Does he agree that it is important that schools and GPs, who will have contact with the people the young carers are caring for, do all they can to try to make sure that young carers are flagged up in the system, so they get the support that they need?

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She anticipates my next point, which is how important it is that we as a society identify young carers. When I sat down with our young carers in Sheffield and asked them what their priorities were, typically selflessly they put that at the top. They were not thinking of themselves but of the others who had not come into contact with the local group. As she points out, schools and GPs are in the best position to play that role.

[Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on calling this important debate. There is a charity in my constituency called Be Free Young Carers, which represents over 3,000 young carers in south Oxfordshire and the Vale of White Horse. One of its concerns is that once young carers are identified, the assessment process takes about six months and the help they receive can often be superficial—for example, simply being directed to websites. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the assessment and support for young carers is still inadequate?

[Paul Blomfield]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and that is a point that I will return to.

The lives of young carers are divided between home and school, so schools can make a huge difference. In their recommendations to the Prime Minister last May, our young carers made two main points. The first was that schools should be required to have a young carers lead. There is nothing special about that—it is there for children with special educational needs and disabilities, and for looked after children, so we would just be following the same approach. The second recommendation was that Ofsted should inspect schools on what they are doing to support young carers and whether they have a young carers lead in the school. In a press release after the meeting, No. 10 said:

“The Prime Minister recently met with a group of young carers who highlighted issues with identification and support in schools and NHS settings and the Government will be undertaking a review to identify opportunities for improvement in these spaces.”

Will the Minister say, eight months on, what progress his Department has made with the review?

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. Will he join me in commending Megan McGarrigle from Glasgow North East Carers Centre, who has being doing a lot of work, going into schools in the east end of Glasgow and talking to young people? That work has identified young people who probably do not even realise that they are carers. The hon. Gentleman is right to touch on the collaboration between local authorities, because in my experience it has been a bit piecemeal.

[Paul Blomfield]

I certainly congratulate the group that the hon. Gentleman mentions for its work, and indeed groups across the country for their work, but that work is very patchy, and it is patchy in our schools, too.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this crucial debate. I was a young carer in a lone parent family between the ages of 14 and 18. I looked after my mother, who had a debilitating back condition during those four years. At that time there was absolutely no help whatsoever and seemingly no information about any help. Nobody knew where to turn in that regard. Does he agree that when help is framed, it needs to be flexible? It can be as simple as an afternoon off, or as major as to be all encompassing in its scope, to help that person and their family.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and for sharing his personal experience as a young carer. I agree with his point about the flexibility of help needed for young carers, who face many different challenges. It needs to be tailored for individual need.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making some excellent points. In relation to support, does he agree with me and my local Oxfordshire charity, Be Free Young Carers, that charities are often relied upon to deliver all of this support, and that there is little support from other actors, such as local authorities? We need to have that.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend is right. She is reaffirming the point that has been reflected in a number of interventions about how patchy provision is. Charities play a tremendously important role, but more needs to be done by the statutory sector as well.

[Jo Platt (Leigh) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further to that point, does my hon. Friend agree that extending commissioning and grant funding is essential in ensuring that the needs of our young carers are met? That is something that was relayed to me by an amazing charity in my area, Wigan & Leigh Young Carers. The problem of sustainability and reliance on short-term funding streams is holding many charities back.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about consistency of commissioning and support for work in this area.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a crucial and powerful speech. I have been working as part of the cross-party parliamentary taskforce on kinship care to try to join all the dots and find a way forward in supporting kinship carers, young and old, through the system. Quite frankly, they save the state a fortune. Does he agree that Parliament needs to take a good look at this problem and start supporting these people in a proper manner?

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The response to today’s debate is extremely encouraging, and shows that there is clearly concern across Parliament, so I hope the Government will pay full attention to that.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time. Two weeks ago, I was giving out awards at the inaugural Eleanor Marx awards ceremony in Lewisham. Schools were asked to nominate young women for their achievements, and the winner of the award was a young carer, in recognition of the work she did in supporting her mum and younger brother. She was overwhelmed by the recognition she got at that awards ceremony. Does he agree that more needs to be done to recognise the tremendous work that young carers are doing?

[Paul Blomfield]

It is brilliant that that award was allocated in that way. That sort of recognition is certainly something we should all be looking to, and maybe we can all seek out opportunities in our own areas to help to secure it.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Taking the hon. Gentleman back to the schools situation, does he think that the power that Ofsted is given to look at what the school is doing on this is very weak, and that strengthening Ofsted’s power in that respect would be a great help in identifying those young carers and ensuring that they are looked after?

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates my very next point. We will never see consistently good practice across schools until they are measured and assessed on it, and Ofsted’s role in that is crucial. I ask the Minister, in his winding-up speech, to say whether we can look forward to the Government’s requiring schools to have a young carers lead and requiring Ofsted to include the issue in its inspections.

Returning to some of the other points that our young carers from Sheffield made, there were two recommendations for the national health service, which have begun to be addressed in the NHS long-term plan and the commitment to carers, for which I am grateful. I have shared their recommendations and my questions with the Minister, so I hope he will also be able to confirm that the commitment in paragraph 2.33 of the long-term plan, which says:

“We will continue to identify and support carers”,

will include young carers and recognise the special nature of their needs. Will he say whether general practitioners will be required by the Care Quality Commission to hold a register of young carers in their practices and be inspected on it?

I welcome paragraph 2.35 of the commitment, which says:

“The NHS will roll out ‘top tips’ for general practice which have been developed by Young Carers, which include access to preventive health and social prescribing, and timely referral to local support services.”

It goes on to say:

“Up to 20,000 Young Carers will benefit from this more proactive approach by 23/24”,

but does the Minister recognise that that number falls well short of the estimated 700,000 young carers across the country?

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and fellow Sheffield MP for securing this debate. In a previous life, when I was a councillor, I was privileged to chair the children, young people and families scrutiny board, and met every year with Sheffield Young Carers, to whom I say thank you once again for bringing the young carers down to Parliament and letting their voices be heard. It is a shame that we do not celebrate the work they do, because they save the NHS hundreds of thousands, even millions of pounds. I was a young carer. My mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when I was about six, so I had the opportunity to look after her. That was good, but at the same time you are not the same as your mates; you are somebody a bit different. The ask from the Sheffield Young Carers is very small, so will he join me in hoping that the Minister will give those young people hope for a better future? The statistics that we have seen show a high risk of their becoming NEETs—not in education, employment or training—with 67% of young carers being bullied and 45% of young adult carers reporting mental health issues. This is a small group of people who really go the full mile and need some care themselves.

[Paul Blomfield]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I thank her for sharing her personal experience and for the work that she has previously done with Sheffield Young Carers. Our young carers also have some fairly modest recommendations on financial support, which is an issue she touched on, recognising that their families are poorer, that they have higher costs and that, unlike their peers, they cannot get part-time jobs. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on their proposal that they should get some form of carer’s allowance, which is being introduced in Scotland, and free bus passes, for which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) is spearheading a local campaign. Specifically with relation to his Department, does the Minister agree that young carers should be one of the named groups eligible for the 16-to-19 bursary?

I have one final question, relating to implementation of the Care Act 2014. A key principle of the statutory guidance issued under that Act is:

“Children should not undertake inappropriate or excessive caring roles that may have an impact on their development…their emotional or physical wellbeing and their prospects in education and life.”

Clearly, the evidence demonstrates the impact. In 2016, the Children’s Commissioner published a report revealing a very patchy service across the country, with many young carers remaining hidden and unsupported. One problem is that there is no guidance to define what is meant by “inappropriate or excessive”. Does the Minister agree that there should be national guidelines defining what is inappropriate or excessive care, to better support professionals in assessing and providing for the needs of young carers?

Fourteen-year-old Phoebe, who also joined me to meet the Prime Minister, has been caring since the age of eight. She probably spoke for all 700,000 young carers in the country when she said:

“I never get much time to myself. I worry a lot. I do panic that I can’t look after myself as much.”

She also said:

“This affects my own well-being.”

Should we not be doing everything to ensure that the caring that contributes so much to the family and saves the country so much does not affect the wellbeing of our young people, and that those young carers get the support they need to make the most of their lives?

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield]

I am delighted by the number of hon. Members from both sides of the House who have contributed, and I thank them for that—I am sure the young carers they represent will be grateful too. I am also grateful to hon. Members for sharing their personal experience, which underlines the point about recognising only the tip of the iceberg. Four hon. Members described their experience as young carers, which makes an important statement about the number who go without recognition.

The point was made that good work is done by volunteers, and that is absolutely right, but we should not have to depend on them. Their work should be underpinned by good statutory provision, which needs to be consistent across the country if young carers are not to burn out.

I thank the Minister for the answers that he did provide, although I was disappointed by some of them. He spoke quickly and quietly, so I did not catch everything that he said—I will be reading Hansard. I gave the Department four days’ written notice of every question, so I had hoped that I would get fuller answers. In some cases, where he did answer, he tried to shift responsibility away from the Government and on to local authorities and others, which was disappointing.

Finally, I pay tribute to Sheffield Young Carers, which was the inspiration for the debate. I hope that it recognised, in all the contributions, how strongly hon. Members feel about these issues and how far we will not let them go.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered support for young carers.