Senedd supports call for unpaid carers bill

Chris Haines ICNN Senedd reporter

Senedd members backed calls for a bill to ensure better support for more than 310,000 unpaid carers across Wales.

Sioned Williams told the Senedd that unpaid carers save the Welsh Government more than £10bn every year as she criticised “significant failings” in terms of support.

She said only between 0.3% and 8% of carers who need a carer’s rights assessment received one despite a legal right under the Social Services and Wellbeing Act 2014.

The Plaid Cymru politician told the Senedd: “We cannot continue to fail to support unpaid carers like this. We must do more to bridge the gap – the clear gap – between the Act’s rhetoric and the reality on the ground.”

Ms Williams said a fundamental weakness identified by Carers Wales was a lack of understanding within councils of the situation facing unpaid carers.

‘Great debt’

In her proposal, she called for better monitoring, greater sharing of data where appropriate and a duty on ministers and councils to recognise unpaid carers as a priority group.

Ms Williams said: “Wales owes a great debt to unpaid carers and we have a moral duty to give them greater recognition and support. Failure to do so only leads to additional costs and pressures for public services at every level.”

Siân Gwenllian, a fellow Plaid Cymru member, said she only recently learned of the right to a carer’s needs assessment while researching how to best meet her mother’s needs.

She said: “We need to promote this far more, because the assessment can open the door to important sources of support for informal carers.”

Labour’s Julie Morgan pointed to the Welsh Government-funded short breaks scheme and carers support fund which were extended last week with a £5.25m investment.

‘Absolute lifeline’

The former social care minister said: “The short breaks scheme I think has been a great step forward, as well as the carers support fund, which I think has been an absolute lifeline, we are told, to carers to access money in a time of financial crisis.

“And I remember somebody telling me that they’d taken a grant from the carers support fund and they were using it to pay for Christmas dinner, because otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to have any Christmas dinner.”

Mabon ap Gwynfor said: “If there is one cohort of people in society that is ignored, undervalued and disregarded, it is unpaid carers.”

Plaid Cymru’s shadow health secretary warned carers can suffer burnout without respite.

He said: “Their working week is not made up of five working days, seven hours a day, with 25 days of leave every year – those aren’t their terms and conditions.

“There are no rules to say that young people aged 16 cannot work more than eight hours a week for carers. But, again, there are over 20,000 young carers in Wales working diligently for their loved ones, without the support that they need.”

‘Great concern’

Wales’ social care minister Dawn Bowden said the Welsh Government must focus on making sure rights under the Act are consistently embedded and delivered.

Responding to the debate on February 5, she told the Senedd that a ministerial advisory group on unpaid carers has commissioned a new census to better understand needs.

She said: “Unpaid carers I’ve spoken to have also told me about how they feel that they can’t access timely information or advice and that they’ve not been able to easily receive an assessment of their support needs, and that should be of great concern to all of us.”

But Ms Bowden did not see an immediate need for a bill, saying: “Rather, we should direct our energies to ensuring the current legislation that we have is effectively enabled.”

While the non-binding motion was agreed, 31-2 with 22 abstaining, a bill is unlikely to be brought forward without the Welsh Government’s full support.