Care Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee am 9:30 am ar 14 Ionawr 2014.
Norman Lamb
The Minister of State, Department of Health
People’s needs for care and support cover a wide spectrum. Care and support can be provided in a number of different ways. The purpose of the clause is to illustrate some of the ways in which care and support needs might be met. It is critical that the new approach to care and support set out in the Bill focuses on people, their needs and their outcomes. As such, we do not want to set out a detailed or prescriptive menu of types of services into which adults’ needs have to be slotted. Rather, we want local authorities to have flexibility in how they meet people’s needs so that they can innovate in care and support to achieve better outcomes.
The clause ensures that there are no legal barriers on the types of care and support that can be provided. Instead, the clause sets out a list of examples of how care and support needs can be met. This approach and the use of illustrations is intended to act as a signal that in a modern care and support system, we should be thinking about more than just the traditional ways of meeting care and support needs, such as placing someone in a residential home or making domiciliary care visits. These may, of course, be the best way of meeting someone’s needs. However, their needs may also be met through counselling services, information and advice and other kinds of good services or facilities. This could cover a wide range of services, so although the list contained in the clause gives some examples, it is not exhaustive. The most important thing is that people get the care and support they require.
The clause enables this to happen. It sets out the flexibilities that local authorities have in arranging for care and support. The local authority may meet people’s needs in care and support by arranging for another organisation to provide a service or by providing the service itself. It also enables the local authority to make a direct payment to the person who needs care and support so that they can manage and buy their own services, increasing the control that people have over their lives and the services that they receive. I hope that the clause meets with the Committee’s approval.
