Opinion

In my view - Carers' strategy brings welcome change

16-Jun-08

After decades of campaigning, carers are finally getting the political attention they deserve. Last week the government launched its long-awaited National Strategy for Carers, after more than a year of consultation.

The strategy promises £255 million of new investment. In particular, we welcome the £150 million for respite breaks (to be delivered via PCTs) and the £38 million to be spent on helping carers combine work and care, health checks for carers and GP training.

Looking deeper into the strategy, the vision for 2018 is ground breaking. The strategy commits to ensuring carers are respected as equal care partners with access to integrated and personalised services; that they will have a life of their own and be supported to stay well; that they will not be forced into financial hardship by their caring role and that young people will be protected from inappropriate caring roles.

The transformation process in health and social care is critical for delivering this vision, since carers are at the sharp end of the impact of poor-quality care services.

Carers often find that the inflexibility and unreliability of care services are a major barrier to combining caring with paid work. In a study by the University of Leeds for Carers UK, we found that only a quarter of working carers felt they had adequate support from formal services and most said they needed at least one type of formal service that they did not currently receive. Direct payments and individual budgets therefore have the potential to benefit carers, provided they are given the support they need to manage them.

The NHS must also do more and the pilots announced in the strategy to improve the way services work together locally must develop a model that looks at the needs of the whole family and works across service boundaries.

For too long the six million carers in the UK have been kept on the margins, uninformed and forced to run around in circles looking for support. If successful, this new strategy will transform the way we support them.

Imelda Redmond, chief executive, Carers UK

Comments

Ken Maddison

20/06/2008

The strategy does nothing for carers-only for the charities purporting to support carers.

The extra promised for respite will only maintain the present level which is even now about a third of what actual care in respite homes actually costs.

Carers need extra money to just survive, it's living in poverty that creates medical problems for us--we can't afford to eat right or even to heat our homes in winter and we certainly can't afford the cost of getting help with our care roles.

Extra financial help for carers would save money and work for the already overburdened NHS.

Ken Maddison 24/7 carer for wife.

Clive Arnold

20/06/2008

The only people "welcoming" this strategy are those that don't have to live on £50.55 a week.

Most Carers regard this strategy as insulting and another piece of 'spin' to get out of paying us a realistic income for the work we do.

Our lives are decimated and the root of our problems are cold hard cash. We cannot afford to heat our homes in winter.

The promise of more respite breaks? Great, I've had one in 15 years of being a Carer, for that I had to approach a charity to do an assessment? I won't be doing that again, I'm NOT a charity case I'm a worker and expect to be paid as such.

My message to the government and those that "welcome" this strategy is that you have failed us miserably, we need a promise of money for THIS year not for 3 to 10 years time from now. Carers are going to suffer more than ever this winter thanks to the ever rising fuel costs, the strategy has condemned Carers to another winter of misery.

Carers aren't 'repsected' they are 'expolited'

Ian S

23/06/2008

The amount of sheer hard work Carers do is neither measured nor recognised.

Its not measured because there has been no genuine effort to go to real full time experienced Carers homes with properly qualified time and motion staff to do any kind of assessment.

Why?

Because the government knows darn well that any such "real world" assessment (and not just the dream world some supposed experts live in) would put pressure on them to remove their (self imposed) exemption from paying the minimum wage to all of us Full Time Experienced Carers.

We would of course want this backdated.

For some Carers that would mean payments running into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Britains Carers have been sold out once again by the very people who purport to represent them.

No recognised Union (like Unison for instance) would stand for a single one of its members being treated the way we have been for the last 40 years.

The stated amounts of £255m are not even Treasury approved yet and will probably come of other PCT budgets, so there's something for you professionals to ponder, where will the axe fall?

This needs billions of pounds of investment right now, not in 10 years time when many of todays Carers (who are over retirement age) will more than likely be dead.

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