How my life has changed since…

Before explaining where I’m going after nearly 2.5 years of these blogs, I feel that I should tell you where I’ve come from and how I got here.

My parents grew up in Glasgow but moved to Perth, Scotland, before I was born. When I was ten or so, neighbours of my parent’s lifelong friends moved from Glasgow to Perth and we met them a few times but didn’t really see the Craigs that much.

A few years later in Toronto airport on the way back from our last family holiday, I told Dad that we were going to the bar where, of course, we bumped into the Craigs. We chatted and they told me to get in touch as they had a flat that I could rent in Glasgow where I was going to university. And so they became my landlords.

After university, I was working for a utility company in Perth without much purpose. It was then that Mr Craig, a Trustee of Perth & Kinross Carers’ Centre, approached me. A few months later, I began working as the press, funding and marketing officer for the Carers’ Centre.

I learnt so much during my two years there, professionally and personally, and then moved to manage a national fundraising team for The Princess Royal Trust for Carers.  After a couple of years, I moved down to London to become the charity’s policy officer and these blogs started mysteriously appearing.

However, for over three years I have been living in London whilst my girlfriend has been living in Perth, Scotland and we thought it would be good to live a little bit closer together. We had two ideas; Scotland or somewhere else.

Well, it seems that somewhere else got there first and in early February we fly out to Cambodia for 2 years. Through VSO, I’ll be working on educational policy for a group of charities there.

My life has changed because we bumped into the Craigs in Toronto airport, and it has continued to be shaped by some of the inspiring carers that I’ve met since. It has been my privilege to work for them. I am also aware that whilst I leave this job, and leave working for carers, there are many carers who do not have the choices and opportunities that I enjoy as illustrated by our Who Cares? application. It is these people who I feel that I have let down on occasion and am sorry to be leaving them.

This is not yet goodbye as there will be more posts before I leave late January and over the blog to my Director of Policy, Moira Fraser who has blogged here before. But as it is carers who I ultimately work for, I felt as though I should at least hand in my notice.

Thank you, and take good care

Gordon

You’re in for a surprise! (The results)

The results are in! In my last post, I asked people to answer five questions about social care in England because I had a hunch that what people thought would be different from reality. In fact, perception was the complete opposite of reality.

Q1. The correct answer is that 89.7% of people receiving social care support in England were quite, very or extremely satisfied with the services received. This option received the lowest votes, with most people thinking only 25.5% of social care users would be so satisfied.

Q2. Same trend. Correct answer was 53.4% of social care users rate their Quality of Life as good, very good or so good it could not be improved, but most people thought only 18.9% of social care users would say this.

Q3. The reality is that 57% of social care users feel that the way they were treated when receiving a service made them feel better about themselves. Most people thought only 29% of users would say this.

Q4. We got closer to reality with this one. The most popular answer was that there are 2.81m people who get social care support in England, but the reality is that only 1.57m people do. The correct answer got the second highest number of votes, along with those thought 4.2m got social care support, which is probably nearer the total number of people with social care needs.

Q5. This is the one stat that I think should shock people. Despite the universal acceptance that more people need social care support, the actual number of people getting support fell by 12% between 2008 and 2010. Over 70% of us thought the number had increased.

Now stats are interesting but it’s what you learn from them that gives them power. The answers to the first three questions tell me that most people who get social care support are glad they do and that their quality of lives are improved as a result. So providing social care support is a good thing. The answers to the last two questions tell me that there are more and more people in need who are not receiving this “good thing” – social care support.

Putting these two things together tells me quite simply that we are failing people. The Government has the opportunity to provide a “good thing” to people that would be valued and improve their quality of life. Government must grasp this opportunity, publish their proposals in March as promised and radically improve the social care support system so that more people get more support and use less of their savings to do so. Go on Government, do something good.

Note:

 Government postpones reform until 2025

Take care

Gordon

PS. We’re going to publish on www.carers.org in a few days the results for each council from the survey of social care users, and we will also do so for a survey of carers done in 2009/10. We will try to rank performance so you can see where is doing well and where could do better. I’ll put the link up in a comment to this post once they’re up.

You’re in for a surprise!

I promise that I have an exciting side to me, but I love statistics. Even if statistics don’t provide the whole answer, they usually at lease signal the questions that need to be answered.

Good research can often challenge preconceptions and change what people think. They can challenge what we unquestioningly hold to be ‘common sense’.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre produce huge amounts of statistics on virtually everything related to health and social care, and I love them for it. They have recently released two sets of statistics that I think would surprise many people, and many even challenge our preconceptions.

So I want to put this to the test. Click on what you think is the right answer to the questions below and we will see what people think. Then on Wednesday 14^th December, I’ll post the correct answers on this blog and we can compare reality versus what people think.

Trust me – it will be exciting!

These results are for people in England receiving social care support during between 1^st April 2010 – 31 March 2011.

So, these questions look at what people who use social care think about it. But what about …

Which one do you think is the correct total?

And finally…

I hope you’re sharing my love of statistics, and I promise my post looking at the real results and what they mean on 14^th December will be worth it!

Thanks

Gordon

Carer’s rights for free advice

Note: The following blog post is by guest blogger Carita Thomas who is a member of Young Legal Aid Lawyers.

This year’s Carer’s Rights Day theme is “Money Matters”. The aim of the day is to highlight the need for carers to get advice about claiming benefits, getting a carer’s assessment and accessing the support they need. Often having to give up work means carers can easily face money problems and fall into debt, piling on the stress they are already under.

Unfortunately the Government is driving a bill through parliament that would cut the free advice that you can get through a Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB), law centre or your local law firm, helping you resolve problems before they go too far. At the moment, if your income is low enough, you can see a specialist adviser funded by “legal aid” in lots of areas of law. They can help you access your rights, putting you on the same footing as anyone else who can afford a lawyer.

If the Government’s plans become law they would remove free advice for around 650,000 people per year. For some cases you would no longer get legal aid at all, like a problem with your benefits or a clinical negligence claim. The cuts are so harsh that advice services may not be able to survive, especially those law centres and CAB which have lost funding from other key sources like local government.

The government says its plans would save £350 million a year but there will be long term costs. Good quality advice early on can stop problems from getting worse and Citizens Advice has estimated that for every £1 of legal aid spent on housing, debt, employment and benefits advice the state saves between £2.34 and £8.80.

It is estimated that 135,000 people per year will lose legal aid for benefits cases, of which 58% will be ill or disabled. Can many carers afford the cost of an advisor? When the average carer provides care worth £18,473 a year, this move does not seem justifiable.

However, the Bill is now in the House of Lords and Peers want changes. Baroness O’Loan spoke about what it will mean to lose free help with clinical negligence cases:

“The effect of the current proposals will be that yet another two-tier system will emerge. There will be those whose parents or carers who just cannot contemplate how to bring such proceedings and who will ultimately suffer the consequences in terms of reduced living standards.”

The bill will now go into committee stage where the peers will go over it line by line. You can still influence their decisions. Politicians need to hear from the public to understand what it would mean if you couldn’t get the advice you need. Contact Scope, who are collecting stories from disabled people who used legal aid to get the right benefits (). You can find other ideas for how you can help the campaign here: Save Legal Aid, Justice For All and Sound Off for Justice.

Related items:

Read a previous post by Gordon to see why legal aid can be important for carers

Government’s bill