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10.53 am
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis) on introducing the Bill and compliment him on the way in which he did so. He said in his introduction that it was a journey of hope. I suppose that most of us, during the time we are privileged to be here, entertain a genuine hope that wherever we sit in the House, we can help take people from social exclusion to social justice, and I am very happy to be able to support the Bill.
Carers are essential to the community. Carers look after family, partners or friends who are in need of help because they are ill, frail or have a disability. The care that they provide is unpaid. Without carers, social services would be under even more strain. But without being given every opportunity to access their rights, carers are put under considerable strain themselves. The Bill would remedy that. I understand that the Government support much of this excellent Bill and I very much welcome that. I understand that the Opposition also support the Bill. I understand that the Government want some further qualification of clause 5 and other minor parts of the Bill, and that Ministers have said that they will consult on those over the next six weeks. As we have heard, the Bill seems to command universal support from all those concerned, including employers, from HSBC to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Local Government Association and very many others, who have signed up to support the Bill drafted with the help of Carers UK.
As the right hon. Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) tellingly said, if the Bill passes into Committee it is crucial to consider carefully how it might best be implemented. As he said, all too often we see private Members' Bills enacted only to have the frustration of their not being implemented, and our constituents do not always fully understand that. I hope that the Minister will be able to address that point when he responds, because implementation is crucial.
Carers are growing in number. The 2001 census found that there are now some 6 million carers throughout the UK. That is a staggering 10 per cent. of the population—12 per cent. of the adult population. There are about 1,000 carers living in north Oxfordshire and I suspect that my constituency is pretty typical of most constituencies. In Cherwell district it is expected that there will be a 50 per cent. increase in the number of people aged over 65 by 2021—something like 15 per cent. of the population—and retirement age is the point at which many of us will move towards being increasingly in need of some form of care. But of course, as we have heard in today's debate, caring is not only about the elderly. Far more attention must be given to caring for children and, for that matter, carers who are children.
In anticipation of the debate, I got in touch with the Banbury carers centre, an excellent carers centre, which started to be funded a number of years ago with money that came in part from the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. I asked whether the staff of the centre would help me. I prepared a questionnaire, and on my behalf they
sent it to 1,000 people in the constituency who they knew to be carers. It was an enormous survey, so that people were able to respond in total anonymity, and of the 1,000 questionnaires sent out, 200 were responded to. That was a pretty good sample of those known to be carers.I had asked 15 questions. I asked the carers for whom they were caring, what contact they had with social services, what information they received from social services, whether anyone at any point explained to them their rights as carers or explained to them community care legislation, and finally whether there were any other issues of concern to them as carers locally. So that was a pretty extensive survey, of a large number of carers with a fairly typical experience of caring.
What struck me about the responses to every question was their unanimity. To almost every question, I got the same response from practically everyone who replied. I of course point out that some carers strongly supported the work of Oxfordshire social services. Carers who did get some help from the authorities praised the quality of that help. However, the reality is that fewer than 2 per cent. of the carers who responded to my questionnaire had received any, or adequate, help from social services, and even in the cases where carers had said that they received good help from social services, it was often to assist them in getting the benefits to which they were entitled from other agencies. That at the very least suggests that even those carers fortunate enough to have the help of social services were failed by other parts of the system.
It is likewise fair to suggest that the minority of carers in receipt of help from social services to cover all—I emphasise, all—of their needs are looking after a relative with many, varied and complex needs. For example, one carer explained the excellent help that Oxfordshire social services were giving to his 80-year-old wife, who is suffering
- "advanced stages of Lewy's Body Dementia, breast cancer; has had four mini-strokes, cannot walk and has to be fed and taken around in a wheelchair".
Carers locally are telling me that when social services do not have a clear statutory responsibility to assist, they are left on their own. No one explains any of their rights to them. No one gives them any information about taking a break; no one from social services tells them how they might look after a relative or friend coming out of hospital; and no one offers to explain community care legislation to them. Carers' rights are not explained to them. That is what 98 per cent. of typical carers under a typical local authority told me.
Given such an overwhelming thumbs down for social services' communication, my next question of how readily information was received became somewhat academic. I was particularly perturbed by the lack of information given to carers about basic benefits to which they could well be entitled, and especially the carer's allowance. It is extraordinary how most carers found out about the allowance. Usually they were told by relatives, friends; sometimes by their GP. Some of them read an article about the allowance in the press or spotted a leaflet in their local post office. One carer,
whom I knew, even heard about it from another mother on the maternity ward. Very often, carers find out about the allowance because they are told by a fellow carer. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) said, all too often carers have to brief other carers.That makes some sense, but I am truly staggered that only one person out of the 200 who replied to the questionnaire told me that they had received information about the carer's allowance from the local social services. That means that a carer is as likely to learn about the allowance when giving birth in hospital as she is from the local authority. These are carers who are known to the carers centre in north Oxfordshire, not carers who are almost forgotten and left on the fringes of society, as some must certainly be.
Somewhat disturbingly, three carers who responded asked, "What allowance?", "What is carer's allowance?" and, in capital letters, "Never heard of it." That carer's known to the carers centre are oblivious to the carer's allowance demonstrates the extent of the challenge ahead and the need for the Government to implement the measures in the Bill as speedily as possible.
It is clear from my survey that north Oxfordshire carers would know nothing about their rights and benefits if it were not for the carers centre and other local charities such as Mencap and Age Concern. That is not to say that social services do nothing. Oxfordshire county council has a number of online publications available to carers, such as the fair access brochure on benefits and the "better care, higher standards" booklet. These are good, clear guides but the problem is that they are only available online. They are not getting out to most carers. That was indicated by the fact that fewer than a dozen carers responded to my survey by e-mail. Many carers do not have internet access. That goes back to the social exclusion point that was made by the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis).
Mr. Huw Edwards (Monmouth) (Lab): I am sure that we have all listened with great interest to the results of the hon. Gentleman's survey. Does he not think that the results demonstrate that there is a need for a national survey of the services received by carers to ascertain whether the pattern is nationwide?
Tony Baldry: I am sure that that would be welcome. I was genuinely surprised by some of the responses to my questionnaire. A national survey would be extremely helpful.
I note that on its website the county council stresses the importance of word of mouth. It is right to do so. Word of mouth is incredibly important. Surely it would be better, however, if carers were systematically given information about their rights, including their entitlements, so that they could make informed decisions and choices in their lives.
That brings me to the other crucial aspect of the Bill. The measure would ensure that social services and health bodies positively consider carers' health, in the broadest sense. It would ensure that carers are given more opportunities in leisure, education, training and employment. That is what all carers need. That was what almost all carers brought to my attention when I asked what other concerns they had about caring.
Two specific worries are especially prevalent. The first is that the carers allowance stops at retirement age. I have a handful of carers' comments. One says:
- "Carers allowance is only paid until state retirement pension is received. The claimant remains eligible but no actual payment is made. Thus the older you become, the more help you need, the less you receive."
- "We live in rented accommodation and after 17 years of retirement our savings are insignificant—therefore by caring for my husband at home I, and many like me, are saving the health services a great deal of money but because I receive a pension of £43 I am disqualified for carer's allowance."
It is not only the elderly who are unfairly penalised when it comes to benefits. Parents at the children's respite care home in Banbury, Sycamore house, tell me that even those parents who receive the highest level of disability allowance for more than one child receive only one carer's allowance. It is set against the parent, not the child, even though it is the child who is really the beneficiary. Moreover, invalid carer's allowance is not even a mandatory benefit for parents with disabled children. It is monstrous that carers, and those for whom they care, are penalised if they have more than one care need. That is not even to touch on the staggering complexity of the benefit forms and the difficulty of negotiating the benefit system, which further penalises people.
The other central concern of carers is respite care. Respite care needs take many forms. One carer outlined
- "the lack of respite care and long term planning, tailored to help in times of family emergency."
- "there is not enough respite care available unless your child is so severely disabled they cannot do anything for themselves."
- "my main concern is that respite becomes less when my husband reaches 65 years old, which is this year. This will make things more difficult and may result in having to put my husband in residential care."
Respite care is often about simply having contact with other carers and other organisations. One carer says:
- "I would like to be contacted now and again to see if there's any help needed and not to be forgotten by everyone, feeling alone and isolated."
- "if one can never leave the patient alone, one cannot get out at all, it is particularly difficult when one is nearing 79 and has bad health."
- "Our concern is respite care in this area. What happens to our son if anything happens to us? How do we go about finding help?"
There are schemes such as "family link" in north Oxfordshire, which effectively allows for the exchange of respite care between families with severely disabled children. Yet some parents have ended up waiting four years to find a link family, which raises reasonable questions about the wider awareness about such schemes. There is also the bizarre situation with emergency relief, where carers must give one week's notice that they will require emergency respite care in the home. It seems somewhat strange that it is necessary to give a week's notice that there is an emergency. Overall, to get much-needed respite, carers effectively have to enter into some sort of bidding process whereby those who shout loudest are most likely to get it, not necessarily the neediest.
Many carers also have concerns over local health care, and especially being able regularly and easily to contact their GP. There are specific concerns in Banbury that I shall not take up because I know that many other Members wish to speak. For example, I shall not detain the House about the closure of a GP practice in the centre of Banbury.
Those working in local social services endeavour to do their best for local carers, but the reality remains that their resources are stretched to the point where often only the neediest get proper assistance. All carers need help.
It is to be hoped that the Bill will serve to indicate that every carer needs proper access to their rights as carers, to their benefits—such as the carer's allowance—and to full availability of respite care, wherever in the United Kingdom they are found.
Many local authority departments, such as education and housing departments, need to be more fully involved in carers' welfare. Only a proper assessment of all carers' needs will ensure equal opportunity. Much of that is about process and getting information to carers; it is not necessarily about placing additional financial burdens on local authorities. I very much hope that the Bill will get its Second Reading today, go speedily through Committee and be enacted, and that the Government will then speedily implement its provisions, because carers deserve the best.
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