UK Parliament / Open data

Care Bill [HL]

Proceeding contribution from Baroness Meacher (Crossbench) in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 9 October 2013. It occurred during Debate on bills on Care Bill [HL].

My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. She is so right in saying that people very often have no idea what questions they need to ask and what services they may be entitled to and therefore this aspect of the Bill is far more important than it sounds.

However, I shall speak to Amendment 21 which, in a way, takes us a step further and would ensure that vulnerable people with current or foreseen complex

needs receive information and advice in a way that they can understand; also that the information and advice takes full account of their complex personal position. This may sound simple enough, but, in fact, an untrained person with a leaflet on local services, probably including lots of irrelevant information, is quite likely to leave someone more confused than they were before the visit. In fact, if local authorities do not want people to find their way to services that they need, a rather weak and unstructured approach to information and advice is probably the best way to achieve that result, but in the longer run, such a cynical approach will be highly costly.

My few remarks are based on a briefing from the College of Social Work, which has had the benefit of input from front-line social workers, managers, recent directors of adult care and academics, all of whom are very conscious of and concerned about the efficient use of resources. They would not say lightly that one should be developing a service such as this for information and advice unless it were really important. For people without dementia or other disorders which make it particularly difficult to comprehend the world around them, information and advice can probably be provided by less trained people without any great loss.

As was said in Committee, the aims and principles of the Bill are welcome. The College of Social Work is concerned, however, that many of these principles will not be fulfilled in practice. We hope, with the aims and principles in mind, that the Minister will agree to some further clarification in the Bill, or in regulations, on the key role of skilled social workers in supporting and protecting some of the most vulnerable people in society through their involvement at the information and advice stage.

Key stakeholders were grateful that, in Committee, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, recognised the point of this amendment. He said that,

“some authorities have also used qualified social care staff as the first point of contact and have found that this can be effective, efficient and timely, helping people to the care and support that will help them most”.

At that stage he envisaged that,

“guidance will set out the clear expectations of what the local authority’s service should cover or what it should seek to do in order to ensure that the information and advice is sufficient”.—[Official Report, 9/7/13; col. 216.]

The aim here is to ensure, by including the appropriate wording in the Bill or in regulations—I fully accept that having it in regulations would be perfectly satisfactory—that professionally qualified social workers will be deployed in sufficient numbers, including at the information and advice stage, for people who really need that level of expertise. As I have already said, those with complex needs may be a relatively small number of people. This should ensure that these particularly vulnerable people are put in touch with the most appropriate services for them. This could avoid the need for more intrusive and expensive interventions at a later stage.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
748 cc114-5 
Session
2013-14
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Subjects
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