Support for Carers

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) on securing the debate and on his powerful introduction, which included his personal experience.

Like other Members, I will contribute specifically on the issue of young carers. A couple of years ago, when I led a Westminster Hall debate on young carers, I was struck by the number of colleagues from this snapshot of 650 people who came along and shared their personal experience as young carers, including the right hon. Member. It was striking that so many had that experience. I cannot offer that. I simply became involved in the issue after meeting Sheffield Young Carers and being blown away by these extraordinary young people as they juggled all the huge challenges for everybody of their age with responsibilities for caring that would daunt many of us. They include young people such as Holly, who started caring when she was just nine or 10 for her mum and her sister. Her mum had an underactive thyroid and her sister had reflux in her right kidney. Holly said of her 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 5 minutes on my own. 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 be an adult and be very careful. The highs are that I get to spend lots of time with my mum and sister. The lows are that I have no other family around so it’s just us 3. It’s very painful for me and very emotional to have to watch my sister screaming in agony.”

Holly’s experience is reflected in that of too many young people across the country. Young carers’ average age is just 12 and their family income is at least £5,000 lower than others’; 68% are bullied at school, 26% are bullied and about their caring role, and 45%, unsurprisingly, report mental health problems. They achieve on average nine grades lower at GCSE than their peers, and they are four times more likely to drop out of further and higher education.

With all those challenges, the right support is vital. Clearly, we owe them nothing less. Reaching out to those we know is only one part of the challenge, because so many young carers are hidden from view and are not recognised in the places they can be best supported. As the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) said, the 2001 census identified 166,000 or so young carers, but research suggests that there are as many as 800,000 in England alone. The truth is that we do not know how many we are talking about, so the first step in supporting them is to identify them.

Just over three years ago, I secured a Prime Minister’s question and described the experience of some of the inspiring young people I have worked with through Sheffield Young Carers. I asked the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), whether she would meet them. To my surprise, and to her credit, she agreed, so I took eight young people down from Sheffield.

In advance of the meeting, I said to them, “Look, you need to sit down and work out what your priorities are.” What was impressive was that they did not choose issues relating to their immediate circumstances; they landed on the issue of support for others in their position who were not recognised. They put three main points to the Prime Minister: that schools should be required to have a young carers lead, just as for children with special educational needs and looked-after children, with a responsibility to identify and support young carers; that Ofsted should inspect schools on what they are doing to support young carers; and that GPs should be required to play a role in identifying young carers, and the Care Quality Commission should check that they hold a register of young cares in their practices.

We had a great discussion with the Prime Minister. In a press release after the meeting, No. 10 said that

“the Government will be undertaking a review to identify opportunities for improvement in these spaces.”

Arising from that, the Carers Trust published a useful toolkit on identification practice for young carers in England, but we need to go further. I appreciate that there is a responsibility on local authorities under the Children and Families Act 2014 to proactively identify young carers, but it is hard to see how they can comply with that duty without working in partnership with schools and GPs.

It is not just about identification. A designated lead in schools can tell children about the types of support that are available, be somebody to talk to, address the issues of flexibility with homework and lateness, get young carers to talk about shared experiences and ensure school staff can provide a support plan. GPs are also well placed to identify support. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us what progress has been made in giving schools and GPs that role in identifying and supporting young carers in the two years since the Government gave that commitment.