Caring Responsibilities

Barbara Keeley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Tony Baldry]

I am sorry, but I will not give way any more because these exchanges demonstrate why I need to read into the record for future debates the three paragraphs that I mentioned earlier. We would all love to have lots more money that we could spend, but alas that is not the case.

With regard to this particular debate, it seems to me that there is a lot more that can be done to help and support carers without necessarily spending a huge amount of extra money. The first thing that we ought to do, or at least we ought to make a much greater effort to do, is to identify which people are carers and to encourage carers to see themselves as carers. Local authorities provide considerable services for carers, but of course they can only provide those services if people identify themselves as carers.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tony Baldry]

I will not give way, as I just want to make a little more progress.

I was quite interested in a note from Sainsbury’s. Sainsbury’s has been pursuing an initiative in Torbay to help to identify “hidden” carers. It was working with the Torbay Care Trust and it sought to identify customers in its supermarkets who might have caring responsibilities. Staff talked to customers and if it seemed that a customer might be a carer, they were asked if they were in fact a carer. If the customer said, “Yes”, they were then directed to a trained member of the Torbay Care Trust. In a very short period, that initiative led—in just one supermarket—to 140 new people signing up with the Torbay carers’ register.

Sainsbury’s is going to expand that initiative to other stores across the country. I suspect that huge numbers of people who act as carers do not know that that is what they are, for example, husbands and wives who look after loved ones, and young people who look after parents. We should be working as hard as possible to help people to recognise that they are carers. Considerable help and support are available for people who know they are carers. In carers week, one can see that a range of organisations have come together—

[Barbara Keeley]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tony Baldry]

I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment.

A range of organisations that provide advice and support have come together, including Age UK, Carers UK, Counsel and Care, Crossroads Care, Dementia UK, Macmillan Cancer Support, the Multiple Sclerosis Society, Parkinson’s UK and the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, but they obviously cannot give advice unless people actually recognise that they are carers.

[Barbara Keeley]

I agree that identifying and supporting carers is important. Will the hon. Gentleman therefore communicate to the Minister with responsibility for care services that he should support my Carers (Identification and Support) Bill, which the Government have indicated they would not support? The Bill would provide a basis for the proper identification of carers by NHS bodies, local authority bodies and schools. It is more appropriate that public bodies help to identify carers, rather than the task being left entirely to supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s.

[Tony Baldry]

I do not dissent from that, and in a second I will come on to the Law Commission’s report. It is important that we recognise carers, and if statutory bodies can help to identify them, that too is important.

We are fortunate this afternoon to have the Under-Secretary of State for Health present, and I wish to make a couple of points about carers and health. Often nowadays, when a person being cared for goes to see their GP or a specialist, the carer is treated as if they were invisible. The concept of patient confidentiality is being used as a mechanism for denying the person who is being cared for the support of their carer, whether it is children taking their aged parents to see the doctor, or a husband taking his wife or vice versa. Often, the carer is able to provide counsel and care for the person they are caring for, and they should not be seen by the GP or the health service as invisible. The NHS, GPs and the Royal College of General Practitioners need to work out a protocol for how the NHS deals with carers. There obviously have to be some balances concerning patient confidentiality, but it must be possible to work out how the NHS should deal with and respond to carers.

Carers are most concerned about the people they are caring for needing access to the NHS in the evenings and at weekends, when there are out-of-hours systems in place. The out-of-hours GP system was, as it happens, brought in by the previous Government, and it is of variable quality across the country. I think that the Minister will find that one of the growing pressures on the NHS is the number of people who self-refer to accident and emergency departments in the evenings and at weekends, because they can at least be confident of being seen, even if they do not need A and E treatment. They cannot be turned away at the door because the NHS has a duty of care when they turn up. It might be sensible to have primary care triage in A and E departments. We have a Darzi centre in Banbury, but I see no reason why one should not have primary care triage at the door of A and E so that people who do not require A and E services can be confident of accessing primary care without having to hang on on various helplines, or talk to distant voices in which they have no confidence. That would give much greater confidence to carers and to those for whom they were caring, and would significantly reduce the cost to the NHS of the significant number of inappropriate treatments and admission at weekends and in the evenings.

Another responsibility of the Department of Health are carers’ breaks, about which many carers are very concerned. One of the longest running campaigns of the all-party group on carers over the years has been on carers’ breaks. There are supposedly significant amounts of money in the system—some £400 million—for carers’ breaks but, as is the case with so much money, it is not ring-fenced. Some PCTs have been extremely good about that, but we will need to watch where the money goes, particularly as we transfer to GP commissioning. Can we develop systems of best practice? It is not just a question of talking about carers’ breaks; we also need to ensure that systems are in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter—let us hope that we do not have too many more interruptions.

There cannot have been a more worrying time to have caring responsibilities, given the abuses at Winterbourne View; there must be a real worry that such things are happening in other care homes or hospitals. There are real worries about the future of Southern Cross, which is still very uncertain. There are also the issues that we are discussing, including the cuts to council budgets, which are resulting in the downgrading or loss of packages of care services. Carers have a range of worries and fears, some of which I want to cover, because these are serious problems for many families and it is right that we are debating them today. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on securing the debate and on the excellent way in which she opened it.

It is 10 years since I started to meet carers in the course of research that I undertook for the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. In that work, I met many hundreds of carers, who opened my eyes to the issues with which they live day in, day out. Some time after I entered Parliament in 2005, I introduced the Carers (Identification and Support) Bill—not all Members were here when I said that I will send a copy to the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), and to the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) because he seems to support the ideas behind it very much.

This year, the theme for carers week is, “The true face of carers”, and its aim is to highlight what life is like for carers and the challenges they face. New research for carers week shows that 80% of carers are now worried about the consequences of cuts to services. As has been mentioned, the survey of social service directors showed that adult social care services face cuts of £1 billion. The Minister has been asked this question, but I would like to emphasise the point: what assessment have the Government made of the impact on carers of the estimated £1 billion in cuts to social care services? I have some detail on impacts being felt in Greater Manchester.

Whatever we think about it, many councils are having to struggle with the Government’s swingeing front-loaded cuts, amounting to 27% over four years—that is the figure in the Budget. Many have found themselves having to cut grants to voluntary organisations, which is having an impact, and many are increasing or removing caps on care charges. As we have heard, the survey undertaken by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) showed that 88% of the councils that responded were increasing charges for social care and 54% were cutting support to the voluntary sector. It is a double whammy—cuts in support and increases in charges.

Like everyone else, carers are hit by increases in the cost of living, which we must also take into account. Fuel costs and VAT affect them in the same way as they affect other people. Most carers are financially worse off than other people, because many have had to cut down on or give up work so that they can care.

For this debate, I asked local organisations in Greater Manchester to tell me exactly how cuts or fears about cuts are affecting carers. A staff member at the Bury, Salford and east Lancashire branch of Parkinson’s UK told me of her experience. She said that there had been a big increase

“in calls from people who are living on very tight budgets with no chance of increasing the family income due to disability and caring responsibilities, distressed because they can’t afford day to day living costs.”

The calls that she receives are about the knock-on effects of lack of money—stress, not eating well, relationship difficulties or breakdown, anxiety and depression. They can lead to illness worsening, and if a carer becomes ill and cannot cope, it can lead to hospital admission. She also said something that ties in with points made earlier in the debate:

“More people with Parkinson’s disease are being turned down for”—

allowances such as—

“disability living allowance and attendance allowance. There is no sense to who gets the benefit and who gets turned down…The distress this causes families is huge because they feel that they are begging. I can only imagine that families who don’t have support miss out completely. The benefit is meant to pay towards the extra costs of having a disability, the fact that genuine people are being turned down means that carers”—

would end up—

“having to do even more.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East raised carers’ eligibility for benefit, which I think is and will become the key issue due to the Government’s programme of cuts and the uncertainty. The Minister has already been asked the question, but will she tell us in this debate what the impact will be if those carers who lose their carer’s allowance decide that they can no longer afford to care? The responsibility for caring will then fall to the local council and the state.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I do not think of my constituency as different from anyone else’s, so I am sure that the hon. Lady will agree that young carers clearly play an important role. Those who are 16 years old and under do not qualify for any financial assistance, but their role is critical for the family, parents and those they look after. Does she feel that the coalition Government should address the importance of young carers?

[Barbara Keeley]

I very much agree. I have a point to make later about that topic, because the staff who work on the young carers project in my constituency have said that they are very concerned about carers losing their education maintenance allowance. That is the one support that the state gave young carers and it is going, which is a worry.

To return to the testimony from Parkinson’s UK, the final points were about more carers contacting the staff member to ask for help finding respite because they are struggling to cope; financially, they cannot now afford a break, a treat or a holiday. I am glad that the hon. Member for Banbury raised that point. The staff member said:

“I know of one carer who has had to take on a part time cleaning job in the early evening because money is so tight. She puts her husband to bed before she leaves”—

for work—

“at 4pm so that he is safer and so she won’t worry that he will fall while she is out.”

I think that we would agree that we would rail at care agencies that put a person to bed at 6 or 8 o’clock, yet this carer has to put her husband to bed at 4 o’clock because that is the only way that she can do the cleaning job that she has to do.

I also had some input from a branch of Age Concern in Greater Manchester about how cuts to grants are affecting its dementia support service, which is important because it is another line of support. Cuts to grants of 40% over the next three years are affecting its capacity to deliver individual and group support. That goes against objectives 5 and 7 of the national dementia strategy. The staff member told me:

“Carer support groups have had to close. These are groups where carers can get a break, have a chat to other carers and get advice and information from staff. These groups help to maintain morale and prevent carers from becoming socially isolated.”

Even though there are personal budgets, which will come in in Greater Manchester, carers of people with dementia often find it hard to mix in other social groups because of the “different” behaviour of the person with dementia. Carers have described the groups as a “lifeline” and something “to look forward to”. The fact that they are being cut back is important.

The proactive support to carers of phoning them every few weeks is another aspect of Age Concern’s work that is being cut. The staff member said:

“We now have to wait for them to contact us for time-limited intervention. We know that many older people are proud and longsuffering and will often suffer in silence rather than ask for help.”

Before the cuts, branches of Age Concern in Greater Manchester ran special events for carers such as a carers day each year, parties and trips. The reduction in funding means that it can no longer offer the extras that it knows give people a better quality of life. I am very concerned to hear that carers in my area in Greater Manchester are starting to suffer.

I want to return to the two sides to the debate—values and choices. We are fortunate in Salford because, due to the way in which the cuts and the organisational turmoil in the NHS are being managed, we are not suffering as much as other areas. There are choices. Labour-run Salford city council is now one of only 15% of local councils still providing support to people with moderate care needs, as well as to those with substantial or critical needs. We are fortunate to have an excellent carers’ centre run by the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. Salford has tried to ensure that carers continue to be supported through these difficult times. As I mentioned earlier, however much the council and our local NHS bodies support carers and try to maintain what they are providing, the national changes and cuts affect our carers.

The young carers project will be affected when the young carers lose their education maintenance allowance. The centre manager told me of two other concerns: the changes to benefits and disabled people being called in to take work capability assessments. The extra worry of having to take them and of having benefits curtailed are starting to affect carers.

The centre manager also said that a major concern for her organisation was that although the carers’ centre was very well established, the service has to go out to tender through the joint commissioning process next year. She said:

“We are aware of a number of carers’ services which have gone out to tender in other areas, and bids have come in from organizations and agencies which have no experience, knowledge or expertise in carers and carer issues, including organizations from abroad.”

What reassurance can the Minister give to staff of the carers’ centre that an established, trusted and effective organisation such as theirs will not be undercut in the tendering process by organisations with no local knowledge and no experience or expertise with carers or in carers’ issues? Our carers in Salford would lose out if they lost the valuable support that they get from their carers’ centre.

The Government’s economic policies are damaging support to carers. Government cuts to local council budgets have gone too far, too fast. Councils pleaded not to have their budget cuts front-loaded. We have lost £1 billion from adult care services at a time of rising need, and we have lost billions in grants to the voluntary sector, but the worst thing is that we are only a few months into the first year of cuts, and we can already see the impact on carers. Carers are fearful about the cuts and distressed that they cannot manage financially. People with serious conditions such as Parkinson’s are being turned down for attendance allowance and made to feel like beggars if they appeal. Young carers are losing their education maintenance allowance. Carers are now unable to afford a break or holiday. It is shameful that a carer should have to take a part-time cleaning job and put her husband to bed at 4 pm.

That is not a record of which the coalition Government can be proud, and it is so early in this Parliament. I hope that carers week gives Ministers time to rethink the impact of the cuts that they are making.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Colleagues, three Members have sought to catch my eye, and we have 19 minutes before winding-up speeches begin, so can we regulate ourselves to about six or seven minutes each?