My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 88SA, 88SB and 92ZZCZA, all of which are designed to ensure that parents who have care and support needs receive sufficient services to ensure that the caring burden on their child is not such as to impede their education and well-being.
Young carers are, of course, children and young people under 18 who provide regular and ongoing care and emotional support to a family member who is physically or mentally ill, disabled or misuses substances. The 2011 census identified 178,000 young carers in England and Wales; an 83% increase in the number of young carers aged five to seven years old; and a 55% increase in the number of eight and nine year-old children caring. I find these numbers staggering. We are talking about a lot of children of a very young age caring for a very considerable number of hours each week.
Why are the amendments important? Apart from a concern for the well-being of children, the issue is important for taxpayers. Young carers whose parents do not receive the support they need have poor educational and employment outcomes and suffer from negative health, with obvious cost implications for the Treasury. These amendments and the resulting early intervention could alleviate those problems and avoid crises, family breakdown and child protection issues, which, again, are a tragedy not only for the family but for the taxpayer and society.
9.45 pm
It is vital that an assessment of an adult includes the identification of a young carer—often these young people simply are not identified—and the impact on them of the care needs of the parent. The frequent failure to identify many young carers, and the risk that children are left caring for an adult because the parent has unmet care and support needs, are the main concerns of the National Young Carers Coalition, which is behind these amendments.
Having identified that a young carer is involved, the amendments seek to ensure that an adult will then meet the eligibility criteria and have their care and support needs met so that children will be protected from inappropriate caring. Essentially, there should be no burdensome unmet care and support needs that have to be met by the child or young person, to their own detriment.
Our rationale for tabling these amendments is that the Care Bill does not ensure that adult needs are met sufficiently to protect children. The amendments go further than the draft eligibility regulations, which state that an adult should be eligible if they are unable to fully carry out any caring responsibilities they have for a child—which on the face of it sounds perfectly fine. This will help ensure that parents with care and support needs receive support so that they can carry out parenting and other family responsibilities, and will remove the risk that a child will not be cared for sufficiently. However, it is also vital that an adult should become eligible for care and support so that a child is not at risk of having to meet the adult’s needs.
It is one thing to support an adult to parent a child, but even if a parent fulfils their parenting responsibilities sufficiently, there could still be care and support needs for which the child may assume responsibility. It comes down to a definition of parental responsibility at a particular age. You could say that 11 year-olds can look after themselves, essentially, and that parents just have to be loving and kind. However, if the 11year-old is doing all the shopping, cooking, washing and washing up, and spending 40 or 50 hours a week doing that, clearly the fact that the mother is loving and caring will not be adequate. That is the point we are making.
It is well illustrated by a comment made by a young person who cares for his mother. When asked how his mum’s needs should be assessed so that the family got the right support, he said, “I am the main person looking after my mum, but the question that needs to be asked is, ‘What support would be provided to mum if I wasn’t there? Would mum get more help if I wasn’t there to look after her? Would her needs be met quite differently?’”. Really, he said it all.
In short, the eligibility criteria do not go far enough. I had to have this explained to me because, on the face of it, it sounds fine. I understand that the Government have committed to look at how the Care Bill, in addition to the Children and Families Bill, might be changed to protect young carers. I would welcome firm assurances from the Minister that the Government are looking at these points, and a clear indication of what we can expect to see in the eligibility regulations.