Where do carers fit in?

The research carried out by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that Scotland's policy of providing free personal care for older people at home and in residential and nursing homes has created a fairer system without undue extra public spending.  It also found that ‘while free personal care - such as help with washing, dressing and grooming - has reduced means-testing and money worries for older people with modest means, it has not led to a feared reduction in informal support provided by relatives and friends’.

Carers Wales and the Wales Carers Alliance are making representations to the Welsh Assembly Government about this misrepresentation of the rationale and motivation for carers providing care.

Carers provide a vital, unpaid service often at considerable personal cost.  Charging them for services, which support them in their caring role, is counterproductive and unjust. 

The Coalition is concerned that Fairer Charging does not prevent local authorities from charging Carers. Social care is underpinned by the thousands of relatives who provide care free of charge, thereby relieving the state of even greater expenditure.  To expect carers to pay for support needed for work, which would otherwise be carried out by the state, or be the only group excluded from the Free Home Care policy, is unjustifiable.

Many Carers are themselves disabled although they may not identify themselves as such or receive services as disabled people in their own right. An example being a wife who has arthritis and provides substantial support to her husband who has Alzheimer's Disease. This situation affects numerous households in Wales as recent statistics show. It is essential that a 'window' is not left open which allows authorities to charge carers for services received as a result of a carers assessment. This would lead to incoherence in policy that would allow carers alone to be charged.