Today’s news is full of concern regarding the plight of a young Bristol mother, Riven Vincent, who is at the brink of placing her severely disabled daughter, Celyn, into care because she has been refused additional help in terms of social services-funded care to help look after her at home and to decide not to give Riven more than the 6 hours per week respite break which she currently has.
This case highlights a number of issues to do with community care provision in England today.
Carers of the disabled are entitled to be assessed for their own needs and one of the major factors to be assessed, according to the binding government guidance to Local Authorities, relates specifically to the sustainability of care.
Ask many carers and they will tell you that life is certainly not easy.
There are estimated to be over six million carers in the UK today. One in eight persons in the UK is a Carer. One in six households has a carer residing. Over 855,000 carers provide care for over 50 hrs per week. Over half of carers are employed in addition to caring. About 25% of carers are retired. 58% of carers are women.
9 out of 10 Carers look after a relative. Half of all carers look after someone aged over 75
Studies show that the task of providing care has subjected over half of all carers to a health-related problem.
Carers lose on average approximately £9,000 per annum by taking on significant caring responsibilities.
Carers represent one of the UK’s most socially excluded groups.
Only 30% or so of the UK adult social care budget is used for domestic care provided at home.
Even then, respite, day centre care etc takes up a significant proportion of that budget.
Little is left to support carers.
Even when a person is receiving formal residential and/or nursing care the reality is that over half those persons require someone to act for them and their interests, buy clothes for them, visit them and look after their possessions.
These are often family and carers.
The single most important aspect of the development of recent legislation is the rights of carers to be assessed for their own needs, independently of the service user they look after.
As with the duty to assess service users, the assessment of needs for a carer is the linchpin to the provision of any suitable and appropriate services. A duty for a Local Authority to arrange, provide and/or fund a community care service stems from the identification of a community care need. As the identification of such need can only be achieved through a full, detailed process of assessment, then the right for carers to be assessed created – for the first time – the unequivocal right for a carer’s needs to be recognised and acted upon independently of the needs of the person(s) being cared for.
As Carers know, many services made available to those in need are provided for the person needing care, and not the carer. There are many reasons for this, such as:
- Reluctance of Carers to seek help – they can see asking for help as admitting failure.
- Confusion over rights and responsibilities.
- Local Authorities preferring to access funds which have historically been more available for disabled persons, elderly persons, or children than for Carers.
There are many more.
Legally, as we have seen, Carers can expect to have their own needs assessed and provided for.
In practice, there remain numerous issues and areas of practical concern.
If Local Authorities are struggling with and are likely to reduce community care budgets, as shown in the Riven Vincent case, then it is certainly the case that many, many carers are already struggling with insufficient (or no) hours of support. Cuts will only make the position worse. And yet the Local Authority and NHS duties exist and the responsibility is clearly laid out in law.
People should seek clear advice on their rights.
By welfare advisor, Pete Donohue