National Carers Week

Helen Whately Excerpts

Thursday 8th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) for securing the debate, for her powerful opening speech and for all she does as chair of the APPG on carers. This week is Carers Week—a chance to recognise and focus on carers—but as every carer knows, if you are a carer, every week is carers week. I pay tribute to carers and young carers across the country for what they do, caring for loved ones, whether it is their mum or dad, brother or sister, a neighbour or their child, who will often be grown up, day in, day out, all year round.

Over 4 million people in England are unpaid carers. For some, caring may be a few hours a week helping a relative or neighbour with things they cannot do themselves or providing companionship. For others—in fact, nearly one in three, according to the latest census—caring means over 50 hours each week looking after someone. It is not just a full-time job, albeit unpaid, but how they are spending their lives.

My hon. Friend drew on her expertise, as a former Care Minister, and her personal experience. She spoke about how few families are untouched by caring responsibilities, about the sacrifices that carers make and how they are driven by love, but also the problem of exhaustion and burn-out for carers. She talked about the importance of identifying carers, especially young carers. She spoke powerfully about children with experience of dialling 999 because of a parent needing an ambulance but not telling anyone because of the stigma, particularly due to a parent’s mental health needs.

My hon. Friend asked whether we could build on some of the things we did for carers in the pandemic. I know, as I was Care Minister at the time, how incredibly hard the pandemic was for many carers, how isolated many felt and how many felt they did not have the support they needed. I know how difficult it was to work out how we could support carers during the pandemic, but we managed to do some things, such as identifying carers we prioritise for the covid vaccine. I will take away her request to look at how we can build on the things we did in the pandemic.

I know that the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) is a committed campaigner for social care and carers; we often speak in the same debates. She spoke about some of the financial difficulties for carers, the importance of cross-Government commitment to carers, and carers needing breaks and time off from caring.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) spoke about her personal experience of caring for her father. She talked about the loneliness and isolation but how cricket helped, which made many of us smile. She talked about young carers, how the sacrifices they make are often not appreciated and the long-term effects of being a young carer.

I pay tribute to hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for her very important work in steering the Carer’s Leave Bill through Parliament. She spoke about things that employers can do more broadly to support carers and the opportunity of being a Carer Positive employer. The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said that he chairs a local carers group, and I give him credit for that, whether or not it is a Labour group. That is a very important thing to do, bringing carers together to support one another and listening to what help they need. He spoke about the difficulty for carers in getting assessments. The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) spoke about the cost of living and the cost of heating homes for carers, particularly in his constituency, where many carers are off grid and use heating oil.

We also heard briefly from the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) and for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell). That level of Back-Bench interest in this topic on a quiet Thursday in Parliament shows how strongly people feel, rightly, about the need for support for carers in our constituencies. We also heard from those on the shadow Front Benches, the hon. Members for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) and for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows).

I know, from my own experience and from my family, that caring is something we do because it feels the right thing to do. We might not have a choice or not feel we have a choice, but nor can we imagine not doing it—not caring for the person we love. For many people, it is something that just happens to them: they become a carer without really realising it. Suddenly, they are spending hours caring—perhaps all their waking hours, and often in the night as well—without realising that they have become a carer, and without knowing that they might need support or, indeed, that they could get it. That is why recognising carers and helping them recognise themselves is important in its own right. There is a good reason why recognising and supporting carers in the community is the theme of this year’s Carers Week.

Local authorities, the NHS, schools, universities, all public services, and indeed companies need to continue to improve how unpaid carers are identified, recognised and supported in our communities. This Carers Week, I have had meetings with more than 30 unpaid carers, young adult carers and representatives from unpaid carers’ organisations, and both as Care Minister and in my life outside politics, I meet carers all the time—remarkable carers who have shared their stories with me. Those are so often stories of how hard it is to be a carer, although it is also really good to hear some positive stories. For instance, some employers are really supportive of carers and their caring responsibilities. However, sadly, that is not always the case; in fact, just on Tuesday, one carer told me that she is thinking about giving up her job due to a lack of support. Many hon. Members have spoken about that issue today.

On the important issue of juggling employment and caring, I want to highlight the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, which received Royal Assent on 24 May. Eligible unpaid carers will soon be able to take a week’s flexible unpaid leave each year. I am so pleased to see that Bill pass into law to help carers who are juggling work and caring.

This week, I also spoke to another carer about the challenges they are facing in getting the professional care and support they need. That is one reason why the work we are doing on reforming the adult social care workforce is really important. I say to carers, “Please keep on speaking up. Keep on telling your stories, for other carers and to make sure people know what it is to be a carer. None of you are alone.”

In April, we published our reform plan, “Next steps to put People at the Heart of Care”. The enormous contribution of unpaid carers is reflected in that plan, and in writing it, we were thinking about carers as well as those they care for. This financial year, £327 million of the better care fund has been earmarked to provide short breaks and respite services for carers, as well as additional advice and support. We are finalising plans for how we will deliver the additional sum of up to £25 million that we committed to carers in the White Paper, and I will be sharing those plans shortly. I know it is taking time, but I do really want to get it right.

The Health and Care Act 2022 includes provisions for the Care Quality Commission to assess the performance of local authority delivery of adult social care duties. That duty has gone live as of 1 April with our new assurance framework, which will provide a clear assessment of how local authorities are meeting their statutory duties, including those relating to carers, such as whether local authorities are undertaking their assessment of carers’ need for support and then meeting the needs that are identified. That will address one of the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport, along with other Members: how we make sure carers get the assessments to which they have a statutory right, as well as the support they are identified as needing.

We are working with NHS England to streamline the ways in which unpaid carers are recorded in GPs’ health records, and we have written to all GPs in England to communicate improvements to how that is carried out. Crucially, that identification of individuals with caring obligations extends to young carers. Questions designed to identify children and students caring for family members have been added to the school census, and that important data has been published today. We are also making progress on our plans to transform social care data, better joining up the care to people, including support to unpaid carers as well as those they care for.

Meanwhile, we are taking steps to design a new survey to capture the wide range of experiences and needs of unpaid carers across England, and to commission a valuation of the support provided to unpaid carers through the better care fund, including carer breaks and respite. It might seem obvious, but different carers want different things, so it is right that we take steps to understand and build the evidence base of what works and what matters when supporting carers.

[Barbara Keeley]

Will the Minister give way?

[Helen Whately]

I am really sorry, but I have but a minute left—Madam Deputy Speaker has confirmed that. However, to address the points that the hon. Lady made in her speech, I assure her that not a penny has been taken away from funding for adult social care; in fact, more money is going into adult social care, thanks to the record funding of up to £7.5 billion over two years that we announced in the autumn statement. A crucial part of our adult social care workforce reforms is our reform of the professional care workforce: developing social care as a career for the professional workforce, developing the career pathway and investing in qualifications for that workforce. That is very important to unpaid carers, because the top issue often raised with me by the unpaid carers I talk to is the difficulty of accessing professional care.

To close, I want to say as Minister for Social Care that I care, and I will continue to champion carers’ needs as part of the work I do across Government. I am delighted to announce that I will be convening a roundtable of Ministers to work together across our Departments to identify, recognise and support unpaid carers. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have made contributions on this important topic today, as well as Carers UK for its work this Carers Week and its year-round advocating for carers, and the other campaign groups involved in this week, including Age UK, the MND Association, Rethink Mental Illness, the Lewy Body Society and Oxfam. Finally, I say thank you to all carers.