Madam,

George Holloway is right to draw attention once more to need for residential and nursing care including EMI beds. Government policy is to pursue every avenue in order to sustain ‘care at home’ before allowing patients to be admitted to other facilities.

There is little likelihood they will be willing or able to deliver a truly acceptable level of domiciliary care support for patients being cared for at home. It is very doubtful indeed that care workers could be recruited in sufficient numbers.

There are around 3,500 identified young informal carers (aged five to 17) in the Hywel Dda area who not only suffer the effects of having a person in need of care in the household, but who are engaged in caring duties which limit their personal liberty and are known to have damaging effects on mental health, well-being, education and future life chances.

How can the minister responsible believe that occasional assessment will enable the best outcome for the child when domiciliary care is scarce and a policy of sustaining care at the lowest possible cost is being pursued?

There are also about 4,200 informal carers in the 85 years and older group. With greater maturity and experience, they should be more able to express their feelings to an assessor whilst resisting any coercion. The effects of caring upon these often frail people’s health, well-being and social interaction are well documented and could lead to earlier need for care for themselves.

Most of these 7,700 carers are unpaid and even after assessment respite is often extremely limited, if available at all.

Children should surely not be taken advantage of, neither should the frail elderly be put at further risks and be left with nowhere to live with dignity and support in their final years. Immediate steps should be taken to enable the very young and the very elderly to opt out at their own, or the patient’s request without further assessment.

The work of charities highlighting the situation of carers is commendable, but serves to sanitise the deplorable practice of exploiting the weakest in society.

There are additionally some 40,000 carers in the Hywel Dda area aged between these extremes. There will be many having their well-being and employment opportunities damaged.

Carers in Wales contribute care worth £8 billion per year, without which the system would collapse. How much of it is spent on ineffective, bureaucrat protecting boards, partnerships, collaboratives etc?

Yours etc,

Bill Parker, Llaingoch, Llanfair Clydogau, Lampeter.

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