Carers: National Strategy

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right and raises an important point. The Department for Education’s new data on young carers, collected through the school census published last year, is an important step towards improving their visibility in the school system, allowing schools to better identify and support their young carers. That will also provide an annual data collection to establish long-term trends. We will consider the findings from the census to inform the next steps.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, on International Women’s Day last week, Carers UK stressed that older women aged 75 to 79 are providing the most unpaid care—50 hours per week—and that there has been an alarming increase since 2011 in women aged over 85 providing unpaid care. These are not the women who come under the Government’s award of one week’s unpaid carer’s leave from work, and neither will they be first in line for the small amounts of respite care funding that GPs have been allocated. How are the Government addressing this situation, and what specific actions will be taken to help to alleviate the terrible burden of care these women face?

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises a very important point and, as I have already mentioned, the Government have conducted a census looking at the data to identify those carers. Various groups of carers all have different needs. My noble friend just mentioned child carers, and the noble Baroness just mentioned carers of working age; employers have to be sympathetic and understand.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

It was over-85s.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

Also, it is challenging for those aged over 85. As I alluded to in my previous answer, GP practices have to be able to identify people in that age range so that they can work with social services and the local authority to make sure that they are supported.