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Category: Social Care

  • Liz Kendall – 2020 Comments on Care Home Visiting Guidelines

    Liz Kendall – 2020 Comments on Care Home Visiting Guidelines

    The comments made by Liz Kendall, the Shadow Minister for Social Care, on 4 November 2020.

    This guidance is not good enough. Many care homes simply won’t be able to comply with the Government’s requirements, and so in reality thousands of families are likely to be banned from visiting their loved ones.

    Instead of requiring floor to ceiling screens for indoor visits, or outdoor ‘window’ visits that won’t work for many people with dementia and because of the winter weather, the Government should instead designate a single family member as a key worker – making them a priority for weekly testing and proper PPE just as is supposed to happen for care home staff.

    Unless the government changes course many care home residents will end up fading fast and their families will suffer the pain and sorrow of not being able to see the people they love and care about most.

  • Liz Kendall – 2020 Comments on Skills for Care’s Report

    Liz Kendall – 2020 Comments on Skills for Care’s Report

    The comments made by Liz Kendall, the Shadow Minister for Social Care, on 21 October 2020.

    Care staff have gone above and beyond the call of duty to ensure our loved ones are properly looked after during this pandemic. But even before the virus stuck, social care services were stretched to breaking point with high turnover and vacancy rates and staff that are all too often undervalued and underpaid.

    Unless Ministers take urgent action, these problems will only get worse. We need a long term plan for the care workforce as part of wider reforms to fix the crisis in social care – something the prime minister has promised time and time again, but so far completely failed to deliver.

  • Ed Davey – 2020 Comments on a Caring Revolution

    Ed Davey – 2020 Comments on a Caring Revolution

    Below are the text of the comments made by Ed Davey, the acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats, on 12 June 2020.

    Coronavirus teaches many lessons. For me, one stands out: the importance of caring and carers – in care homes, supporting vulnerable people at home and millions of unpaid carers looking after loved ones.

    People who’ve never appreciated how the NHS and care sector needed to work more closely together have seen that all too clearly, with the tragedy of COVID care home deaths.

    As someone who’s a carer now, after being a carer in my teenage years, the need for our society to value caring and carers properly has always been a personal driver.

    My young carer experience began when I was 12. My Dad had died when I was four, so when Mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer, my brothers and I nursed her at home for three years.

    From looking after her personal care needs to cooking her food, from administering morphine for her pain to talking with her for hours, we were left to it, albeit thankfully with the help of family and neighbours. Still today too many young carers bear the burden alone, isolating them and affecting their education and life chances.

    Of course, people can end up with caring responsibilities at any age. Most unpaid carers are adult women, and people from our black and ethnic minority communities are disproportionately employed as carers on low incomes: issues of equality are firmly bound up with the caring revolution we need.

    A caring revolution isn’t only the right campaign, it’s smart politics too. Carers UK estimate there were around 9 million carers in the UK pre-COVID, and that as many as 4 million more people have become carers during the pandemic.

    So I’m determined Liberal Democrats offer far more to this huge group. I’m starting today by introducing a new Bill in the Commons to secure more flexible employment rights for carers, alongside my five-point plan for carers:

    Employers would have to make reasonable adjustments for carers – helping carers who wish to work to combine a job with caring.

    Carers Allowance would be boosted immediately to £75 a week – a 12% increase

    The amount carers can earn before losing out on Carers Allowance would rise from £128 a week to £160 a week

    Young carers would receive free travel on all public transport

    Carers would be made a protected characteristic in the Equality Act – securing equal rights and protections for carers in the workplace and beyond

    This would be only the start: we must build a caring society to stand the test of time.

    My 12-year-old son John has an undiagnosed neurological condition, meaning he can’t walk or talk properly. He needs care 24/7. As his condition isn’t degenerative, he’ll live far longer than my wife Emily or me. Our single greatest worry is how he will be cared for after we’ve gone. Huge numbers of parents live with similar anxieties.

    As Liberal Democrats, we must champion a more caring society that rewards the role carers play and face up to caring’s long term challenges.

  • Steve Reed – 2020 Statement on Mocking Helpline Callers

    Steve Reed – 2020 Statement on Mocking Helpline Callers

    Below is the text of the statement issued by Steve Reed, the Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary, on 27 April 2020.

    These reports are extremely distressing. A full investigation must be launched immediately.

    If vulnerable people who call the helpline are not getting the support they need, the programme must be overhauled.

    The Government rushed to set up the shielding programme as a national scheme instead of integrating it with existing call centres and local support run by councils and charities that know their neighbourhoods better. We need a scheme that’s better integrated with local support to avoid the mistakes the Government is making.