Declares that unpaid carers require a National Carers Strategy; further that the Department of Health and Social Care asked unpaid carers for evidence for a Carers Strategy in 2016 and have failed to produce that Carers Strategy; and further notes an online petition (209717) on this subject has received 2,124 signatures.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to produce National Carers Strategy to support unpaid careers with wider changes to benefits, employment and health and care systems that unpaid carers need, resulting in recognition and valuing of unpaid carers contributions to society.
And the petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Barbara Keeley , Official Report, 27 November 2018; Vol. 650, c. 210 .]
[P002298]
Observations from the Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage):
Towards the end of 2017 Ministers took the decision not to go forward with publishing a National Carers Strategy so that carers could be considered as part of the forthcoming Green Paper on care and support. The Green Paper will be published at the earliest opportunity and will include a focus on how we support carers as part of a sustainable health and care system. In the meantime, in order to demonstrate how the Government was continuing to support informal (unpaid) carers, we published a Carers Action Plan on 5 June 2018. The Carers Action Plan sets out a cross-Government programme of targeted work to support carers over the next two years.