Official Report search · Parliament Workbench

Chamber

Plenary, 28 Nov 2001

28 Nov 2001 · S1 · Plenary

Item of business

Community Care and Health (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Radcliffe, Nora LD Gordon Watch on SPTV

I congratulate the new health team, wish them well in their work and pay tribute to Susan Deacon for her contribution as our first Minister for Health and Community Care.

Like everyone else, I welcome this bill, which will enable provision of free personal care. I was pleased to hear the minister's earlier assurance that a definition of personal care will be included in the bill, as I am frequently asked by constituents what personal care is. The inclusion of a definition is fairly fundamental.

As well as benefiting individuals, the funding of personal as well as nursing care should make it easier to integrate health and personal care services. It should eliminate, or at least greatly reduce, the hidden drain on resources, both financial and human, that results from having to decide what falls within or outwith definitions and, therefore, budgets.

I welcome particularly the elements of the bill that will make a difference for carers. The general principles of the bill should promote the role of carers as partners in care provision. The positioning of carers as key partners in the provision of care should replace the all-too-prevalent perception that carers are clients and are a drain on resources, which results in their being sidelined and ignored. The contribution that carers make must be acknowledged. The hundreds of thousands of carers in Scotland are relieving the statutory authorities of service provision that is valued at anything up to £3.4 billion. Sadly, that contribution is sometimes not recognised. Even more sadly, it is often totally unsupported.

That is why the extension of the right of carers to have their needs assessed independently of the cared-for person is important. To benefit from that, however, carers have to know what their rights are and how to access them, and the resources have to be there to meet the identified need. The statutory authorities must recognise the special circumstances of many carers that might lead to isolation and make it difficult for them to take care of their needs and participate in consultation, for example. If one's caring commitments are such that one has no opportunity to take a break from them, how can one seek out information on respite care or go to meetings to discuss better service provision? We have to invoke the Heineken principle and ensure that we reach parts that we have not reached before.

I make a special plea on behalf of young carers. Too many children are shouldering adult burdens and are being robbed of their childhood. We are failing them badly and my experience shows that, even when we know who they are and where they are, the support that is available to them is thinly stretched.

I strongly support the recommendation that the health service and local authorities should have a duty to identify carers. If they do not identify carers, how can they either work properly with them in partnership or see that they have the support that they need to carry on caring? To illustrate the necessity for that, I will tell members of a case that recently made me extremely angry. An 80-year-old man who had been caring single-handedly for a dependent wife discovered by pure chance—by way of a passing remark by an acquaintance—that voluntary respite care was provided in the town that he was living in. His household had been visited regularly by medical staff and someone, somewhere, should have seen what was happening and put that man in touch with the resources that eventually made an enormous difference to his quality of life.

I welcome the bill in total and the provisions for carers in particular. I also welcome the elements of the bill that will facilitate people working together.

Search Hansard contributions

Plenary, 28 Nov 2001

In the same item of business