Carers Week 2006
I would be grateful if those who are leaving the public gallery could do so as quickly and as quietly as possible, because it is time to move on to the next item of business. As you should all be happy, I hope that you will not be too distressed by my request.
The final item of business is a members' business debate on motion S2M-4445, in the name of Cathy Peattie, on carers week 2006. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes that 12 to 18 June is Carers Week 2006; recognises the valuable work of national and local carers' organisations, such as Carers Scotland and the Falkirk and Clackmannanshire Carers Centre which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary; recognises the importance of supporting carers in employment and enabling them to fulfil their caring and work responsibilities without detriment to their own health and well-being; notes that the health of the Scottish economy depends on the health and well-being of unpaid carers and their ability to juggle work and care; further notes that recent research has shown that 58% of carers who provide a substantial amount of care give up work because of their caring responsibilities, and believes that the Scottish Executive, local government and employers should consider and support the adoption of flexible alternative care solutions and carer-friendly working arrangements to give more carers the opportunity to remain in, or take up, employment.
I acknowledge and applaud the valuable work of national and local carers organisations such as Carers Scotland, which are tireless in supporting and campaigning on behalf of carers. The main support and point of contact for many carers is provided by local organisations such as the Crossroads Association and the Falkirk and Clackmannanshire carers centre, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.
The theme of this year's carers week is carers and health and my motion links carers' health to their importance to society and the Scottish economy and to the proposal that they receive adequate support to ensure, first, that their caring duties are not detrimental to their health and, secondly, that they are able to remain in and take up employment, if they so wish.
We must assist carers and enable them to access support and services. Although carers are key partners in community care, many of them remain unknown to statutory agencies. Indeed, in Scotland, an estimated 660,000 carers provide unpaid help and support to relatives and friends. About one in eight adults is a carer and there are many young carers. Sixty-three per cent of Scottish carers are women and 37 per cent are men, and three in five of us—most of us—will become carers at some point in our lives. It is estimated that by 2037 the number of carers in Scotland will have increased to about 1 million.
Although carers are an increasingly important part of our social and economic system, their contribution is all too often underestimated and their potential contribution is not always taken into account. Carers save the Scottish economy £5 billion a year—an average of £7,500 per carer—which is almost equal to the cost of providing national health services in Scotland.
However, it is not just a question of what we would have to spend to provide the service that carers provide. More than 250,000 people juggle work with caring responsibilities for disabled, ill and frail relatives or friends; 150,000 people in Scotland provide more than 50 hours of care each week; and 58 per cent of carers who provide a substantial amount of care have to give up work to meet their caring responsibilities. Caring can mean not only giving up an income, but giving up future employment prospects and pension rights. The carers allowance does not adequately compensate for that loss.
Too often, people have to fight to get appropriate services for the people for whom they care, and that in itself can be draining. With support through the adoption of flexible alternative care solutions, more carers could remain in work. Carer-friendly working arrangements would give still more carers the opportunity to remain in work, and it is not too difficult to consider ways in which employers could be more flexible. That could mean longer lunch breaks, later starting times, access to a telephone or an understanding that someone might need to leave early, but it is not impossible to make such arrangements. In an age when we hear employers talk about skills shortages and the difficulty of recruiting staff, surely it is possible to consider flexible working hours. We need to support carers when they wish to take up employment. That would go some way towards redressing the injustice that they face.
We must recognise the potential impact of carers' work on their health. In a recent survey, only 27 per cent of carers questioned said that they had been offered a health check. Eighty-eight per cent of respondents believed that carers should receive annual health checks. Throughout the United Kingdom, there are 6 million carers and, as I said, the numbers are increasing. Many are elderly; 1.3 million carers are over 65. People who provide high levels of care are twice as likely to be permanently sick or disabled. Seventy-nine per cent of carers say that their health has been affected by caring, with stress and depression being among the most common complaints. The national health service should introduce a system to ensure that carers are offered health checks when they become carers, with regular check-ups thereafter.
The role of carers is integral to the well-being of our society. We should ensure that carers' well-being is integral to the policies and practice of this Parliament.
I thank Cathy Peattie for bringing the debate to the chamber. Many of us, at some point in our lives, will either be carers or need carers, or both. It is a consequence of the fragility of our society. As one who is related to carers, who is involved with those who care for elderly relatives and who is also a politician, I fully support carers week and all the good work that carers do for Scottish society and for the economy.
The Conservative party has always argued for a strong economy and a small state, giving power and responsibility to individuals and communities. It is clear to me that carers organisations define those two beliefs. An astonishing 12 per cent of the UK population are carers, and an eighth of the same population combine their caring with full-time or part-time work responsibilities. If the Scottish proportion of that number were to give up their care roles, it would cost the economy billions of pounds and would necessitate an increase in bureaucracy and red tape to manage it. In addition, approximately £660 million of carer benefits go unclaimed each year, some because many people do not know that the benefits are available to them but some because the individuals feel that they do not want to be paid for providing care that they see as a duty to kith and kin. Carers in the UK and in Scotland are therefore net contributors to the economy, and that fact should not go unnoticed.
On a more altruistic level, we should support those individuals because what they are doing is the right thing to do. We should support and encourage a society that lives up to the ideals that we feel are most important, one of which is caring. Caring brings together communities, encourages voluntary work and often aids the grieving process through a period of close support—not to mention the fact that we ourselves may well be forced to rely on a carer at some point in the future. For the reasons that I have just laid out, it is important that we give carers the support that they deserve because of their roles. It is also important that we do not bog down that vital role with added red tape and restrictions; it would not make sense to improve one sector of society to the detriment of another. However, there are still points that should be considered and which could vastly improve the situation for many carers in Scotland.
Unfortunately, as Cathy Peattie said, many carers are more likely to fall victim to depression and other mental illnesses because of the situations in which they find themselves. It is therefore important not only that we provide the necessary help and support to those individuals, but that we make it easier to access. Readily available information and support networks and groups—as well as respite opportunities—would all take the strain off a situation that is often very stressful. That would have the added benefits of enabling the carer to provide a better level of care and to have greater part-time job opportunities, and relieving pressure on the national health service in the long run.
The response from surveys of carers shows that there is universally high praise for the service that is provided to carers by the voluntary sector. I have spoken about the voluntary sector frequently in my early weeks in the Parliament so I shall not dwell on the subject now, but a stronger and freer voluntary sector would provide much of the support that carers need in their lives in a non-patronising and more community-based way.
Estimates show that carers save the United Kingdom Exchequer £57 billion a year. That is equal to annual spending on the NHS. Therefore, voluntary carers in the community annually provide a second NHS for free. They participate actively in maintaining the health and well-being of our country. Scotland has almost half a million full-time carers. To ignore that huge section of our society would be myopic to say the least. We must support and strengthen community-based voluntary activity wherever we can. By "support", I do not mean just standing up in Parliament and saying good things about it. Damage to carers' health could be reduced, if not eradicated. If we allow voluntary organisations to work with carers to their best ability, we will put our actions where our words are and show that voluntary carers are a section of society that we really care about.
I congratulate Cathy Peattie on bringing the subject to the Parliament for debate. I offer apologies on behalf of John Swinney, who has done a great deal of work with various carers organisations. He would have been here tonight had it not been for an unbreakable engagement.
Like every member, I can add to the organisations that are named in Cathy Peattie's motion others in my constituency, such as the Perth and Kinross Association of Voluntary Service and the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, which runs a carers centre in Perth. However, what none of us can do is provide a roll call of the many individuals who care for family, friends and neighbours without reward, without recognition and, too often, without any official help at all. Carers are as diverse as the needs of the people for whom they care. They include people who look after elderly patients or partners with Alzheimer's disease, parents of disabled children and young carers who do much more than we would ever expect young children to have to do.
To the description "unpaid carers", I would add the phrase "unrecognised carers". Carers are often unrecognised even by themselves; I know, because that happened to me. People often take on the role without realising that that is what they are doing. That results in many of them never accessing the limited help that is available unless others are vigilant on their behalf.
Carers' problems are many. Capability Scotland has a substantial presence in my constituency as its Upper Springlands complex is just outside Perth. Capability Scotland's research has shown that the parents of a disabled child are often denied the right to work because of a lack of suitable and affordable child care. Almost half the participants in its research said that they do not work because they care for their disabled child. The research also indicated that 70 per cent of the parents who work rely on family members to provide child care—half of them do so because of the lack of suitable or affordable child care.
The motion is right to applaud Scotland's secret social service of carers, but we must do far more than applaud them. We must acknowledge the difficulties that they face and start to address them.
At the end of last year, I attended an event in the Gateway centre in Perth, which was attended by representatives of a wide range of voluntary sector organisations. The event considered issues associated with voluntary sector funding. There was real concern about the future. Most of the organisations recognised that local authorities are under increasing pressure and, given that they depend to a huge extent on local authorities for their funding, they are very concerned about what the future holds. As a result, many of those who were present expressed a desire for funding to be dealt with directly by the Executive. I know that the Executive is resisting that and trying to push the situation the other way. Frankly, there is a feeling that the Executive is dragging its feet on the issue.
The Health Committee will soon deal with petition PE954, which calls on the Scottish Executive to implement fully the 22 recommendations of the care 21 report, "The Future of Unpaid Care in Scotland".
The 2001 census, to which Cathy Peattie referred, showed that a staggering 480,000 adults and more than 16,500 children and young people provide unpaid care in Scotland. The number of carers now tops 600,000. The reality of their lives is that carers would not have it any other way, but they are saving society a massive amount of money—£5 billion a year—and they deserve greater respect and more practical help in training, respite and support. In that regard, and following on from the Health Committee's care inquiry report, I point to the need for a much more proactive approach to, for example, the issue of direct payments to ensure that, now that family members can access such payments, there is a much greater take-up than there is currently. We need to be proactive on such issues. It is not enough to sit back and wait for carers to come to us; we must go to them. That is the only way in which we will make their lives better.
I congratulate Cathy Peattie on an excellent speech on an excellent subject. I also congratulate her on identifying an important aspect of the carers' situation: enabling them to combine caring with work.
I will concentrate on how the present system can be improved. The issue of carers is a prize example of something that, unfortunately, happens too often: there is a big gap between the well-meant and warm words that we and ministers utter, and the documents that set out strategies and so on, and what actually happens on the ground, where the position is variable. Sometimes there is a good system; sometimes there is a bad system. We must develop further what happens already. Carers organisations should scrutinise their local services systematically and identify things in the system that are going wrong or which could be done better to help carers. Local government and national Government departments should have a sort of doorkeeper who would liaise with the carers, receive their specific complaints or suggestions and feed them into the system in order to get something done. We must attend to what happens in the real world, as opposed to what we would like to think happens.
My next point concerns how to harness people's experience of caring in helping other people. People who are still caring probably do not have additional time to act as mentors to somebody else; if they do, that is fine. However, many people who have experience of caring but on whom there is now not such a demand could act as a sort of buddy, encourager, helper and identifier of benefits and things like that. When people start caring, it is as if they are rather in the middle of a jungle somewhere, which they do not understand. Somebody like a David Livingstone who could lead them through the jungle would be helpful. Help from more experienced carers about information on benefits, suggestions on how to help and just moral support would be useful.
My final two points are not new, but they are still important. First, respite care should be as high a priority as possible for councils and the Government. If someone is taken away for two weeks, or whatever is required, to have a real rest, that makes all the difference to whether they can continue caring for the other 50 weeks in the year. They can resume another year with their batteries stoked up again.
My final point is on young carers, who are not always identified. Schools and social work departments should be told to help identify young people who have the burden of caring. They should ensure that they get support and that, for example, they do not merely get abused at school because they have not done their homework since they have been caring.
There are ways in which we can improve the system, but many good things are going on. I hope that we can build on the success of what we do already.
I, too, am pleased to congratulate Cathy Peattie on bringing the debate to the chamber. I apologise because, unfortunately, I cannot stay for the full debate. However, I am happy to contribute.
In addressing the economic case, Cathy Peattie cited the astonishing figure of £5 billion as the value that unpaid care is worth to our society. In recognising the strength of the economic case, we need also to recognise carers as a workforce for which we have the same responsibilities as we do for any other workforce.
The idea of focusing on flexible working patterns and enabling people to retain employment if they choose to do so is also important. Although we seem to hear a lot about flexible working patterns from employers, the flexibility seems to work only one way—employees are often called on to be flexible, employers rarely so.
The Green party's citizens income policy is relevant to the debate. Our policy would see a payment made to all citizens; people should benefit economically from the society in which they live. We see a citizens income as a right and not a payment in exchange for unpaid work. The aim is to give people the flexibility to make choices at different times in their lives, which could include combining work or education with the care of a relative or a friend.
Beyond the economic case, a discrimination and rights-based case needs to be made. In calling for a rights-based approach to be taken, the care 21 report, "The Future of Unpaid Care in Scotland", recognised that fact. If we agree not to exploit carers as a workforce but to give them rights, we need to ask ourselves not only what support carers need but what their needs and rights are. We need to find a way for carers to articulate those needs and rights at a stage in the process before the decisions are made on the services that are provided to them and the way in which they are delivered.
The care 21 report quotes a carer as saying:
"‘The reality is if social work says they can't do something because of health and safety and the nursing staff can't do it and it still needs to be done. Who does it? The informal carer – there you go.'"
That sums up the argument very well. It shows a workforce whose time and effort are being taken advantage of. The strong motivation of carers should not be exploited.
The human rights case—the rights-based case—calls on us not only to uphold and celebrate our human rights legislation but to go further. I hope that that will happen when, after the summer recess, we establish the Scottish commissioner for human rights. The commissioner should have the power to look at issues to do with how support services are provided to people and to investigate individual cases in which carers believe that their human rights were not taken into account in the service design.
The issue is very much in keeping with the Executive's access to justice agenda. If it is difficult for most people to access their rights through the courts, how much more difficult is it for someone who is juggling paid work with unpaid care?
I am very pleased that recommendation 1 in the care 21 report calls on the Executive to
"develop a Carers' Rights Charter in Scotland".
In his summing up, I hope that the minister will respond to that recommendation, for the record.
I congratulate Cathy Peattie on securing the debate, which is important because carers are such important people in our society. I also congratulate carer support groups in the Highlands on the work that they do. In our widely scattered communities, they are invaluable.
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I draw the chamber's attention to Fin Macrae's photographs of Highland carers, which are on display in the Parliament this week. The photographs show the diversity of carers and, more important, they show carers as people. It is very important for us always to recognise both those aspects of caring. Carers—old or young—look after husbands, wives, friends, parents and children.
My speech will be a bit of a litany of the carers who are in Fin Macrae's photographs. As I said, he has shown them not as carers but as people. There is Liza, walking her dog. There is Ian, who is determined to climb Ben Nevis because he wants to get fit. He has not looked after himself because he has been looking after somebody else. Eilidh, a young girl from Ullapool, helps to look after her sister and is an avid Rangers supporter. Those people should not be defined by the fact that they are looking after somebody. We have a poet in Rona. Diana's husband has dementia and is in a care home, but her treasured possession is two ornamental hearts that they bought, which symbolise their love.
There is Margaret MacKinnon, sitting with a dog on her knee, thinking of her husband, Alister. The caption says:
"Cherished memories of a lovely man."
We have David, with his two children, whom he looks after, and Alan Scougal, who is a carer and who also supports carers. Alan says that supporting carers "is a constant journey." We have Douglas, who looks after his mum and is a champion pizza maker because he has to be head cook when his mum is not feeling up to it.
There is Isabel, another poet, with a poem for her son. "I'll be your instrument", she says about his silent music. There is Margaret, who runs a bookshop in Kingussie and is a carer as well. Her bookshop helps to support people who would not otherwise get employment. We have Kathleen, writing a poem to her son James, who has Angelman syndrome, which I had never heard of before I met them.
We have Rachael and Nathan Davies. The caption says:
"Joined together by love and not necessity."
One of them is in a wheelchair—one cannot tell from the photograph which one it is. That is not important to them; what is important is their love for each other. There is Susan, pictured with her husband who, at the end of their married life, has had a stroke. However, Susan says, "We do things differently." They are still a couple.
Eilidh, another young carer, loves cats, Harry Potter and "Star Wars", just like her sibling, whom she looks after.
It is important that we recognise carers as people and recognise their needs, including their financial needs. I have had representations telling me that care 21 is wonderful but asking where the money is going to come from. The Executive has to answer that question.
I, too, congratulate Cathy Peattie on her speech. I concur with the aspirations of the motion, but I would probably wish to go a wee bit further. Despite having heartfelt admiration for the sacrifice and commitment of carers and their organisations, I confess to a bit of anger as well. That anger stems from personal experience. My mother gave up work to look after my brother when he was born with special needs. That was 34 years ago. She has never worked since and her income has never been replaced. She is now ill and is being looked after by my sister—an example of women sacrificing lifelong earnings and pensions to substitute for the state. As well as all the warm feelings of admiration, that makes me angry. Major political and economic change is necessary if we are to achieve any kind of fundamental shift in the lives of people who care and provide that substitute care. It is predominantly women who fulfil that role, so there are equality issues. We will not address the pay gap, the income gap or the pension gap for women unless we ensure that women have their income replaced if they give up their employment to carry out caring responsibilities.
Services in Scotland are being subsidised to the tune of £5 billion a year. We should demand at least a significant proportion of that to ensure that proper support is available for people who care and to replace their income. Fully funded implementation of the care 21 recommendations would be a start, but it will go nowhere near addressing the full scale of the problems.
To be frank, it is simply unacceptable that people should have to give up work to fulfil the needs of those they care for. That is society's responsibility and that is where Government legislation—whether employment legislation or other legislation—has a role. The Government must enforce that legislation and fill the gaps in public services to give those who need care and those who give it the confidence in those services that will prevent them from taking decisions that cut off or reduce their income and plunge many of them into poverty.
I realise that many people willingly choose to be the carer and, no matter how good public services were, would still want to give personal care, particularly for a close relative, but that fact does not excuse the Government from recognising their contribution. While people voluntarily substitute for the state in caring for people, the state needs to substitute their income. That could avoid income poverty and inequality being consequences of caring.
I congratulate Cathy Peattie on securing the debate during carers week 2006 to highlight, once again, the invaluable contribution that is made by the one person in eight in our country who fulfils a caring role for a relative, friend or neighbour who cannot manage without their support. As Roseanna Cunningham said, many of those unpaid carers do not recognise their roles as carers; they think of themselves as helping out friends or loved ones. Some have done it all their lives, some are dealing with the aftermath of illness or an accident and many care for more than one person.
Sometimes, carers suffer damage to their own physical and/or mental health as a result of their caring roles. A carers and health survey that was carried out in Aberdeen two years ago found that 94 per cent of the city's carers are under stress. The survey's conclusion states a point that is not often considered:
"carers are a workforce, albeit a hidden workforce, one which cannot take time off sick from their job or leave their stress behind at 5 o'clock. If 94% of any employer's workforce were found to be under stress, there would surely be an investigation into finding some means of reducing that stress."
It is obvious from that survey that carers need to be identified and properly supported if they are to carry out their caring roles without serious detriment to their own health. That is why the network of carers centres throughout the country performs an invaluable role. The Voluntary Service Aberdeen carers centre, which is part of the Princess Royal Trust for Carers network, has been in operation for 12 years now. When I visit the centre, I always meet carers who tell me that it is their lifeline. There, they can meet other carers, compare notes, help one another, work at their hobbies and get a little break from their caring duties. They can also get advice about and help with access to benefits, adaptations and activities that can help them and those for whom they care.
Many carers are in employment and find it difficult to meet the demands of what can amount to two full-time jobs. They often feel that they are unable to give their best to their work while feeling guilty about leaving the person for whom they care at home. That may leave them feeling tired and listless and eventually may lead to them giving up their paid employment to focus solely on caring. That decision can result in feelings of resentment and contribute to the stresses of their caring role, as they face a loss of income and social contact, which can destroy their happiness and that of the cared-for person.
With appropriate support, it might not be necessary for a carer to give up their paid employment entirely. If more employers were to adopt policies to support carers, many more would be able to cope with a dual role. Part-time working, flexible working time and irregular hours could be possible and could allow the possibility of a return to full-time employment should the caring responsibilities change or cease. Temporary unpaid leave at times of crisis could also be of immense help to carers and allow them to return to work once a crisis is over. Employers of all kinds need to be more aware that they are likely to have unpaid carers among their employees and that they have a role in and responsibility for helping such people to balance work with their caring commitments.
The United Kingdom Government's Work and Families Bill introduces measures to help carers to access flexible working arrangements, and the action for carers and employment project to promote good practice among Scottish employers is to be welcomed. The Scottish Executive's policy of providing support structures for its staff, including flexible hours, part-time working, career breaks and special leave for family emergencies, sets a good example, which I hope will be followed by an increasing number of public and private sector employers.
Unpaid carers make an enormous contribution to the well-being of the country, both socially and economically. That contribution will increase as the population ages. Those carers deserve public recognition for their work and all the support and help that they need to cope with their responsibilities without damaging their own health and welfare. I am happy to support Cathy Peattie's motion to salute carers and to further their interests.
I thank Cathy Peattie for securing this excellent debate.
Donald Gorrie and other members have mentioned respite for carers, which is of paramount importance. I am pleased that the Scottish Executive's response to care 21's report specifies, in a political manner, in paragraph 22:
"If, after conclusion of the work outlined above, it appears that a statutory entitlement to respite might have a useful role to play, we will reconsider the issue."
I can assure the Executive that it must reconsider the issue—there should be no "might" about it, as respite is of paramount importance, as I said.
There are all types of carers. The prospects of kinship carers seem to be on the up a little bit. After dear knows how many years of children from families afflicted by drugs being taken to their grandparents, with the grandparents receiving no remuneration whatever, in many areas they are now getting recompensed for looking after those children. I believe that the Parliament, or the Executive, is looking into the situation with a view to making it imperative for grandparents to be paid some money for that.
The Kerr report could never be fully implemented without voluntary carers. We spoke earlier about how to recompense people. I will mention again the worst case that I have ever heard of. A lady phoned me up, saying that she was a bit perplexed at receiving only 9p per week of a pension. I did not believe it, and went to see her. It turned out that, although she was going to go out to work at the age of 16, her mother took unwell. She nursed her mother for 25 years; then her mother died. She was going to go out to work at the age of 40; then father took unwell. She stayed at home and nursed him for 20 years, after which he, too, died.
The lady turned 60 and applied for her pension. She was asked where the stamps on her card were. She explained that she had been a carer all her life and had never worked as such. The people at the agency asked why she had not let them know and told her that they could have given her some stamps to compensate her for caring for her parents. She replied that no one had told her about that. Perhaps that provision should be made more widely known in the community. She went on to ask whether she could have stamps put on her card retrospectively. "No," she was told. They asked her, "Have you any money?" She replied, "My old father left me £22,000." They said, "Come back when you're poor. In the meantime, we'll give you 9p a week of a pension."
That is a typical example of how carers tend to be financially looked after by the Government. Without carers voluntarily doing their work in the community, society would implode. It is as simple as that. They do a tremendous amount of work. They seek not recompense but a reasonable level of justice. We must raise the level of respite care, and we must make carers aware of the fact that if they care for someone and are not getting their card stamped, they can get the matter sorted out by the social benefits people.
I add my thanks to Cathy Peattie for giving us this opportunity to raise issues around caring. I totally endorse everything that she said about giving support to adult carers so that they can maintain their own employment, health and welfare. Often, quite small measures of support can make all the difference to whether someone can cope and can avoid the difficulties, expense, heartache and guilt that come with a breakdown in caring arrangements.
Sometimes, the support is there, but the person does not know about it, perhaps because they do not even identify themselves as a carer or are so bound up in their caring duties that they do not have the energy and time to seek the help that might make an enormous difference to their lives.
Young carers, in particular, are often left in situations that adults who can no longer cope have left. Some adults do not identify themselves as carers or get the help that they could get if only they knew about it, but what about young carers, who do not have the knowledge, confidence, contacts or ability to seek out help that adults have?
It is especially important that adults look out for young carers. School staff, general practitioners, health visitors and any other professionals who work in the community should be aware that there might be young people with caring responsibilities who are facing adult burdens from which other adults have walked away and who are just left to get on with it because nobody notices. That is a dreadful thought. It is important that teachers and health professionals are, as part of their training, alerted to the signs to look for and told what to do if they encounter young carers and how to put them in touch with the services that they need.
Young carers in rural areas are even more isolated than their urban counterparts. It is difficult and expensive to organise the peer groups that young urban carers find so helpful and reassuring. The part-time young carers support worker in my area had a case load of more than 30 young carers scattered throughout central Aberdeenshire, and it was hard for her just to visit all her charges in the time available, given the travelling distances involved.
We can and should do more for young people who are being robbed of a carefree childhood and, as Carolyn Leckie and John Swinburne pointed out, for people who sacrifice their own economic benefit to look after others—to the enormous economic benefit of society.
I congratulate Cathy Peattie on promoting the debate, which comes at an important time for more than 660,000 unpaid carers in Scotland. It is appropriate that the debate is held during national carers week.
In many ways, addressing the needs of unpaid carers goes to the heart of health and social policy and relates to inclusion, equality of opportunity, reducing health inequalities and supporting the most vulnerable people in communities.
Our approach is not to take the view that all the issues can be resolved overnight, but to work with carers and their representative organisations to identify priorities and take actions to address them. Representative organisations such as Carers Scotland and many others worked closely with my officials in preparing the care 21 report "The Future of Unpaid Care in Scotland", which I was delighted to help launch in Inverness last year and to respond to here in the Parliament on 24 April. We have maintained a focus on these issues with the reception hosted by John Swinney, the petition about which we have heard and this debate this evening.
The care 21 report is at the heart of what we want to do and what carers want to be done in this area. It emerged from a wide-ranging study that the Executive commissioned of present and future needs. It was the largest study of its kind in the UK and found that Scotland leads the UK in its support for carers but highlighted some of the gaps that exist and further actions that will be required.
In the report, there are 22 recommendations for action, some of which are for the statutory or voluntary sector agencies involved, some of which are for the UK Government and some of which are for the Executive. I will say one or two words about the ones for the UK Government, given the motion's focus on employment issues.
One of the recommendations in the report was that the United Kingdom Government should undertake a national campaign to advise employers of the benefits to them of supporting carers and highlighting the rights and responsibilities of employers to carers. I forwarded that recommendation and other recommendations that were directed to the UK Government to colleagues at Westminster who hold relevant portfolios.
In my response in April, I was pleased to be able to welcome the UK Government's proposals in the Work and Families Bill to give adult carers the right to request flexible working arrangements and to be able to acknowledge the work of Carers UK, Carers Scotland, the Equal Opportunities Commission, the European social fund and others to promote good practice among employers through the action for carers and employment project. There are good examples across the private and public sectors of employers giving a lead in these areas. Indeed, the Executive seeks to provide support to civil servants and other members of its staff who have caring responsibilities to allow them to balance work and care. We will keep under review the measures that we have in place in the light of the Work and Families Bill and will seek to improve them further.
It is not my view that unpaid carers are in some way a substitute for care by the state. That view misunderstands the value of what motivates carers and what it is that those who are cared for want. The question is not how the state can replace unpaid care but, rather, how we can support unpaid carers. The question of carers' rights has been mentioned, as was the idea of a carers charter and the right to respite care. We are happy to consider those areas as policy goes forward, but they are not among the areas that have been identified as being the most immediate priorities. Clearly, there are things that can and should be done in the short term. However, we will keep under review the framework within which support is provided and services are developed.
In responding to the care 21 report, in consultation with carers organisations, we identified what we felt were the overall priority areas for immediate action. Strikingly, all of them have been mentioned in the debate this evening. With regard to our support for young carers, respite care, the health of carers and carer training, we have sought to work with carers organisations to develop proposals that can be put into place. On carer health and improving access to flexible respite services, we have brought forward proposals that are intended better to balance caring with paid employment. However, we recognise that improvement will come from wider developments in those fields.
We have issued a carer information strategy—we did that at the same time as we responded to care 21. We have also enhanced incentives for general practitioners to register carers with named carer-liaison staff, which will make a significant difference. Further, we have highlighted the interest of carers in the self-assessment tool that we are preparing to help community health partnerships in their work in managing long-term conditions.
Carer information strategies will ensure that carers are identified early on in their carer roles. Given that most carers present themselves in health settings before they present themselves in social work settings, I hope that that will help to address the issue that Cathy Peattie raised about carers being unknown to social work services and will help to get the recognition that a number of members highlighted as being important. Indeed, the single shared assessment, which is the gateway to accessing services quickly and efficiently, is something that we look to the national health service and social work departments to work together to deliver as efficiently as possible.
Maureen Macmillan and others asked about resources. Clearly, that is a critical question. We will certainly look to the work on respite, young carers and other areas that we are doing jointly with carers organisations to provide us with information in advance of the forthcoming spending review so that we can scope the resources that might be required to improve the position of carers.
Critically, we will do all that work in partnership with carers organisations, recognising both their effectiveness in representing carers and their importance in providing practical support to carers. They can give us in government a clear sense of the priorities for those who provide such valuable care.
The role of carers will only become more important in future years. Long-term challenges will demand long-term solutions. I finish by saying simply that we in government—along with, I am sure, members and carers organisations—are in this for the long term.
Meeting closed at 17:55.