CS 21

Legislation Committee No.5

Response to the Proposed Carers Strategies (Wales) Measure

Action for Children

18 March 2010

Action for Children-Gweithredu dros Blant
St David’s Court
68a Cowbridge Road East
Canton
Cardiff
CF11 9DN

Telephone: 02920 222127
E mail: Vivienne.laing@actionforchildren.org.uk

1. About Us

Action for Children- Gweithredu dros Blant is a leading national children’s charity which provides services to over 12,000 vulnerable children and young people in Wales (as at 1 April 2009). We are committed to helping the most vulnerable children and young people in the UK break through injustice, deprivation and inequality, so they can achieve their full potential. We believe all children and young people have unique potential and that they should have the support and opportunities they need to reach it. We have worked in Wales for 99 years and provide 127 services out of 55 project bases in 21 out of the 22 counties in Wales. Our principal service areas include youth, disability, supporting families and services to children and young people not living with their birth families or living in difficult circumstances.

Action for Children-Gweithredu dros Blant provides nine Young Carers Services in partnership with local authorities in Wales: Ynys Mon, Gwynedd, Conwy, Denbighshire, Wrexham, RCT, Bridgend, Vale of Glamorgan and the higher tier service in Cardiff. We provide services to 680 young carers in Wales, which is just under half of the 1520 places available in young carers services across Wales.

2. General points

Action for Children- Gweithredu dros Blant, as a leading national children’s charity, will comment on this proposed Measure from the perspective of how it is likely to affect young carers. We do welcome the proposed Carers Strategies (Wales) Measure and feel that it will make a contribution to addressing some of our concerns about the needs and welfare of young carers in Wales.

The Deputy Minister for Social Services in her Legislative Statement on the Carers Legislative Competence Order in December 2008 and the subsequent debate in Plenary talked about the scope of the Legislative Competence Order:

'In our LCO, we propose to extend the definition of carers to include carers of all ages, to acknowledge that young carers’ issues are not confined to 16 to 18-year-olds’ and that  'Schools will be included in the competence of this Order. That is important, because we need all agencies, and schools in particular, to work together to meet the needs of young carers’.

And the First Minister in his Oral Statement in July 2009 announcing the Government’s Legislative Programme for 2009/10, said:

'The proposed Measure on Carers will also seek to ensure that young carers do not carry an inappropriate caring burden’

Action for Children-Gweithredu dros Blant is therefore disappointed these aspects and the original Ministerial intentions of the proposed Measure, in particular, the issue of inappropriate caring burden facing young carers, does not feature in the proposed Measure. This is a missed opportunity to radically improve the lives of thousands of young carers across Wales.

Young carers need special consideration because of their particular needs; they need to be identified, there needs to be an holistic assessment of the family’s need including the young carer and young carers should not be taking on inappropriate responsibilities for their age. Where young people do have caring responsibilities it is critical that they are involved in decisions made together with the person they help care for. Furthermore a consistent approach to assessments must be taken as we know that this varies from area to area.

Action for Children-Gweithredu dros Blant has chaired an NGO Policy Group on Young Carers who have worked together to develop a briefing paper on our key concerns and what needs to be done. I attach this joint NGO Young Carers Briefing Paper as Appendix 1 for your information.

3. Response to Consultation Questions

1. Is there a need for legislation (by means of an Assembly Measure) to be made to introduce a new requirement on the NHS and Local Authorities in Wales ("the relevant authorities”) to work in partnership to prepare, publish and implement a joint strategy in relation to carers and if so why? If not, what alternatives do you propose?

Action for Children-Gweithredu dros Blant believes that there is a need for the Welsh Assembly Government to produce a National Young Carers Strategy that makes clear how they will support young carers and for local Young Carers Strategies to be produced which will make clear how young carers will be identified, be provided with information and consulted about services provided to the person cared for and that there will be a timely assessment of their and their families’ needs. There is already some good practice in Wales with some Children and Young People’s Partnerships developing a local Young Carers Strategy, collaboratively, between the statutory services and us as voluntary sector providers of Young Carers Services.

We therefore feel that this proposed Measure for the NHS and Local Authorities in Wales to prepare publish and implement a joint strategy goes some way towards what we feel is needed, as long as there is a specific focus on young carers as well as adult carers. Action for Children- Gweithredu dros Blant would recommend that the local strategies have a separate section on young carers, as otherwise addressing their specific needs would be lost. The requirement will assist with improved and more consistent delivery of information, advice and services to young carers and the person cared for and improved local collaborative working.

We are concerned about the interface between a local Carers Strategy and the other plans currently required from each local authority area and would recommend that the strategic local priorities and intentions of young carers’ plans inform and are reflected in the Children and Young People’s Plans, produced by the Children and Young People’s Partnership as a requirement of the Children Act 2004. In the same way the strategic local priorities and intentions in local adult carers’ strategies should also inform and be reflected in local Health, Social Care and Wellbeing Strategies.

2. Are the sections of the proposed Measure appropriate in terms of reforming legislation relating to the provision of information and advice to carers? If not, how does the proposed Measure need to change?

In considering this question, consultees may wish to consider, in particular, the nature of the provisions in the proposed Measure that:

(a) The definition of appropriate advice and information as defined in the Measure (Section 3);

(b) Local authorities must ensure that in deciding what services to provide to or for a carer or the person cared for, they consult the carer. Also authorities are required to ensure that they consult carers before they make decisions of a more general nature about service provision to or for carers and the persons cared for. (Sections 2 (1) (b) & (c));

(c) Welsh Ministers with the power to make regulations about the following:

i. the services in respect of which the duty to prepare a strategy applies;

ii. the matters to be dealt with in the strategy;

iii. how and when the strategy is to be published;

iv. keeping the strategy under review (including setting a period after which the strategy must be reviewed or replaced);

v. the consultation which must be undertaken before or during the preparation, implementation or review of the strategy;

vi. arrangements to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the strategy;

(d) Welsh Ministers would be able, for each strategy, to designate an NHS organisation as the lead authority for the purposes of co-ordinating and overseeing the preparation and publication of the strategy and any subsequent review.(Section 5 (3)); and

(e) The proposed Measure would also place a duty upon the lead authority, or, where there is no designated lead, the responsible authorities acting together, to submit the strategy to Welsh Ministers. Welsh Ministers would then be required to inform the responsible authorities that they are satisfied with the draft strategy, or if they were not satisfied, give the responsible authorities such directions as considered necessary for ensuring that the strategy complies with their requirements. (Section 6);

Young carers need to be provided with appropriate information and advice. Despite the current legislative framework, in our experience of nine local authorities in Wales, young carers are not always informed of their right to an assessment. Some local authorities undertake assessments of young carers; others refer them to our services knowing that we will assess them and track their progress to improved outcomes.

One of our biggest concerns is that young carers are simply not identified by professionals working in health, adult social services or in schools in the first place. Many young carers are 'invisible’: some young carers don’t identify themselves, seeing their life as 'normal’ and some families are fearful of involving social services, worrying that they may lose their children. In a pilot project undertaken by Action for Children’s Denbighshire Young Carers project, the local authority and 3 secondary schools to raise awareness in schools and identify young carers, we found that over 11% of pupils had a caring role. While we recognise that a caring role can be positive and may not have a negative impact on the welfare and development of a young carer, for many it will. This pilot, together with other local research undertaken in other areas of Wales, demonstrates that the numbers of young carers in Wales is much greater than previously thought. We would therefore recommend that the local Education Department of the local authority and schools should also be 'responsible authorities’ in the Measure as they have a crucial role in identifying and supporting young carers.

It is also essential that carers of all ages are consulted about what services to provide; many young carers using our services report that they are not consulted or involved in decisions about services provided to the person they provide care for.

3. How will the proposed Measure change what organisations do currently and what impact will such changes have, if any?

As voluntary sectors providers, we would want to be assured that we would be involved in the development of any local Carers Strategy. Additionally, when the voluntary sector works with schools to identify young carers, around 10% of pupils are identified as having a caring role. (See above and Appendix 1) A consequence of better identification of young carers by schools, health and adult social services is that there will be more demand for assessments and the support of our services. As there are currently only 1520 places available in young carers services in Wales (see appendix 1) this will result in the need to expand the provision in each county of Wales.

4. What are the potential barriers to implementing the provisions of the proposed Measure (if any) and does the proposed Measure take account of them?

We are concerned that the Measure, if it does not refer to young carers, and if the regulations do not require the development of a Young Carers Strategy as a subset of a local Carers Strategy, may fail to secure significant improvements in outcomes for young carers.

5. What are the financial implications of the proposed Measure for organisations, if any? In answering this question you may wish to consider Part 2 of the Explanatory Memorandum (the Regulatory Impact Assessment), which estimates the costs and benefits of implementation of the proposed Measure.

If the focus of the Measure is on 'carers’, young carers services are worried that funding may be diverted from them to address gaps in support of adult carers.

Across the voluntary sector, there is much concern that local authorities when faced with budget cuts in future years, will target the services commissioned from the voluntary sector in an attempt to protect local authority run services and posts. This will leave young carers services vulnerable as they are provided in the voluntary sector.  Most of Action for Children’s Young Carers Services are an 'add on’ to existing family support projects and funded from small amounts of money from different grant sources such as Cymorth and the Carers Mental Health Grant. Some of our services even at this point in March do not know how much funding they will have to run their service from April. We would recommend that the Welsh Assembly Government ensures secure long term funding is available for young carers’ services or that clear funding responsibilities be placed on local authorities.

We know that there is already a waiting list for all of our young carers’ services and so following on from the answer to 3 on the previous page, better identification of young carers will lead to more referrals and therefore more funding will be required to meet the needs. However there are cost benefits to providing these services - young carers will be less likely to end up NEET, their health will be improved and support services reduce the need for children to become looked after.