Top Tips for Carers

Parliament

Debate on DLA

Tom Clarke MP secured an Adjournment Debate in Parliament in respect of removal of mobility component of DLA. The Debate was held on Tuesday 30th November 2010 and MPs have signed an Early Day Motion opposing the Comprehensive Spending Review’s proposal to stop paying the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to people in residential care.

Mencap are leading a campaign on this – information on their website

National Government

Next steps for Carers’ Strategy

The Government have announced what it will do to implement the aims of the Carers’ Strategy including (A full summary is available on request):

£400m over 4 years to the NHS to provide breaks for carers (not ringfenced)
£6m (unconfirmed) to improve GP awareness of carers’ issues and what services can support carers
Skills for Care & Skills for Health will publish a learning and training framework on supporting carers, a guide for employers and commissioners of training, together with a wide range of tools to support development.

New Vision for Adult Social Care

DH is promoting personalisation and community involvement in supporting people with the aim of everybody who is eligible for social care receiving a personal budget by April 2013. It also promotes supporting carers as being the first line in preventing needs and demands on statutory services from escalating.

However, the Vision also promotes Direct Payments over other forms of personal budgets which we find worrying as they can be more administratively burdensome, and it is often carers who manage Direct Payments for the service user. We will ask the DH why they are promoting Direct Payments in this way and whether they have considered the consequences for carers. A full summary is available on request.

DH Guide on Carers and personalization

This guidance is for health and social care professionals to improve practice and outcomes regarding carers and personalization, and complements the Government’s Vision for Adult Social Care. It has useful good practice suggestions and examples of local services being delivered using many run by Carers’ Centres.

To achieve successful outcomes, they advise there is a need to:

recognise the expertise of and work in genuine partnership with carers at all levels of service design and delivery
enable carers to design and direct their own support, have access to direct payments and be engaged in the support plan of the person they care for and the assessment
establish whole family approaches and planning that ensure there is integrated support
fully recognise the differing social and emotional impacts of providing support to another person and that these do not necessarily correlate to the number of hours spent, or the tasks undertaken, in providing care
develop a range of support options and opportunities to match the diverse needs of carers and the outcomes they wish to achieve in their lives

A four page summary is available on request.

Big Society strategy & consultation for charities

The Cabinet Office has published Building a strong civil society looking at how Government can help civil society organisations grasp new opportunities arising from localism and Big Society. Plans in the strategy include:

reducing red tape for small organisations
giving public sector staff the right to spin-out and form a co-ops or mutual supported by a new network of advice and mentoring
give local communities the right to buy or bid to run community assets
continue to match fund local endowments to encourage giving
modernisation of public service commissioning so the most efficient and effective charities can get a fair chance to bid for public contracts.

Supporting a Stronger Civil Society is a Cabinet Office consultation on improving support for frontline civil society organisations. The deadline for responses is 6th January 2011.

New NHS White Paper consultations

‘Choice and Control’ proposes greater patient involvement in decision-making and a choice of any willing provider, which consultant you see, where to go for diagnostic tests, and which treatment you want. ‘An Information Revolution’ proposes that each patient should have a copy of their own record and that more information should be shared amongst professionals, and also with carers.

The deadline for both submissions is 14th January 2011. Summaries of the proposals are available on request.

Inquiry into human rights of older people

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is carrying out a formal Inquiry to look at how the human rights of people over 65 are respected in home care. They are seeking the views of people and organisations who have knowledge and expertise in this area.

In order to look at this issue from all angles they are collecting evidence on:

Commissioning of services.
The regulatory and inspectorate system.
The legislative framework.
Systemic problems and barriers.

Consultation on draft regulations for specific equality duties

The Government Equalities Office (GEO) is currently consulting on draft regulations for specific equality duties. The proposals suggest replacing equality schemes with a new requirement to publish equality data and to set equality objectives.

Local Government

Local NHS Quarterly Performance review

A performance review of the NHS is published every quarter by David Flory, Deputy NHS Chief Executive. Beginning on pg. 19, there are deficit/surplus figures for each Primary Care Trust (PCT) and health trust. Annex 11 on pg. 39 has details of each health trust’s performance category – performing, performance under review, under-performing, challenged. The six ‘Challenged’ trusts are: Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust; North West London Hospitals NHS Trust; Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust; South London Healthcare NHS Trust; Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust; and West Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust.

Councils still have to support LINks

The DH have advised that local authorities still have responsibility to commission support to LINks during 2011/12, despite the potential change from LINks to HealthWatch.

South West SHA advise of Equality Act impact

Working with experts nationally and within the South West, the SHA has developed a resource pack to support local authorities and NHS organisations with the implementation of the Equality Act.

Service Development

£70m to NHS for reablement services

The DH have advised PCTs how much of the £70m each has been allocated for this current financial year to help with reablement and post discharge. It also advises councils of the legal position on charging for reablement. Reablement packages give people who are leaving hospital after illness or injury help and support for six weeks.

The DH’s Care Services Efficiency Delivery (CSED) team has put together a best practice toolkit to help councils that are looking to introduce a new homecare reablement service, or extend or improve an existing one. The toolkit builds on CSED’s work with councils to compile evidence of how homecare re-ablement services are helping to reduce the level of ongoing homecare support required. Researchers of four reablement programmes in England found that carers play a crucial role and that involving and supporting them can improve chances of long-term patient reablement.

Improving health and social care support for carers from black and minority ethnic groups

Race Equality Foundation’s report finds:

All carers lack support but the experience of black and minority ethnic carers tends to be compounded by structural disadvantage and the marginalisation of ‘race’ equality within social policy
Mainstream organisations can and should be responsive to the specific needs of black and minority ethnic carers, but the low take-up of mainstream services is often attributed to the characteristics of carers rather than to institutional barriers and culturally inappropriate support
The black and minority ethnic voluntary sector has a key role in addressing the needs of carers from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, but it experiences marginalisation, inadequate funding and lack of strategic representation
Social policy acknowledges that service users and carers should be at the centre of policy development, but opportunities for meaningful participation have remained minimal for black and minority ethnic carers
The assumption that black and minority ethnic carers are a homogeneous group overlooks the diversity between and within communities and the ways in which ethnicity and disability intersect with other aspects of carer and service user identity.

Personalisation: are you ready?
Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) have launched a new e-learning tool with the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group enabling social care providers to find out how prepared they are for personalisation. Getting Personal offers a short and simple self-assessment of providers' progress towards personalisation, assessing their performance in relation to a set of key factors. Getting Personal is available for free online now.