Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has a carer's policy for its employees; and what other steps his Department has taken to support employees with caring responsibilities.

The Department has a carers policy for staff who work in the Department.

The Department recognises that care responsibilities are not static and is committed to supporting staff who have caring responsibilities away from the workplace. The caring commitments of staff may be long or short term.

Other steps taken to support employees with caring responsibilities:

The Department has a number of provisions available to its staff including paid special leave; emergency carer leave; unpaid career breaks.

The Department operates a recently updated flexible working policy which can support those with caring responsibilities by giving some degree of flexibility on how, where and when employees work. It includes a range of working patterns including: part-time, job share, remote/ home working, compressed hours, part-year, annual hours and flexi-time. It also outlines support to managers on how to have conversations about flexible working. It also makes it clear to staff how they can raise a request or initiate a conversation.

On the Departmental intranet site there are links to relevant sources of support and useful websites. Special events are publicised on the intranet including the campaign to help carers by the Charity for Civil Servants which was launched on ‘Carer’s rights day’ last November.

The Department launched an employee assistance programme in October 2017, which gives all staff access to confidential, independent, professional information, counselling and emotional support.

During Carers Week in June 2017, the Department highlighted a number of ways that carers could receive support including the carers passport provided by the Charity for Civil Servants.