Carers allowance breaches modern slavery laws surely

No, care is not care. Parenting is looking after your own children. When you outsource that to someone else it becomes childcare. Society has a reasonable expectation that parents should parent their own children. We think of it as a social responsibility. If parents fail to do this, then society will prosecute them, e.g. for neglect.

In terms of care for disabled people, it's not a grey area, and we think of this as medical or health care. Society doesn't have the reasonable expectation that people, depending on random circumstances, should become unqualified nursing staff. This is most evident in personal injury cases, for example, if a birth is mismanaged and the baby is deprived of oxygen for sufficient time to cause brain damage (I used to work in med neg for the NHS). In such a case the damage and loss is quantifiable and compensation paid to account for care costs and impact on the family - this often runs into £millions. In this way, we can see that there is no expectation for such costs to simply be absorbed, the fact that they are for some people is a political choice.

However, I do agree that care for the elderly is a grey area. It was pretty simple when men were typically working until 65 and then dying in their early 70s. There was no expectation that people would be living into their 80s and requiring increasing support. It's for this reason that 'social care' has become such a hot potato in recent years.

The paragraph sandwich I've written above shows the difference between social and medical / healthcare, with the former being social and the latter being political. The reason this is important is because political is determined by law, and the OP was asking about law. It is, therefore, impossible to address the question without understanding the difference, and conflating the social and political demonstrates a failure to do so.

I haven't conflated two issues. Care is care. Even childcare roughly falls into this category broadly. The question is who is responsible for providing care to others?

So far we have come up with different answers for different groups in society. Childcare largely falls to the parents with varying levels of assistance from the state. Elderly care generally falls to the family or the individual to pay unless they can't afford to pay and then the state steps in. Disabled people's care is another grey area. The state is seemingly ultimately responsible but they simply don't have the resources to fund the necessary care for all disabled people and everyone else if friends and family walked away and stopped providing the informal care that the disabled people rely on.

Ultimately it comes back to the fact that family are on the hook for providing at some of their care to their disabled relatives. I say this as someone that also undertakes some caring responsibilities for a disabled relative but absolutely not to the same extent that you do. Threatening to stop caring for all disabled relatives en masses would be the same as all parents threatening to leave their children in foster homes. The system couldn't cope and it would expose the fact that ultimately those that care about the individuals involved will always carry the burden of responsibility for them. We will step in when the state falters. I just wish there was more honesty around this! We haven't departed too far from what has existed for millennia before the creation of the welfare state.

I do wonder if families refused to provide care on a wide scale then we’d see euthanasia being introduced and mandated for some. For the 60k a year plus dementia sufferer, the £100k a year plus residential placement. The only reason the state can afford to support the few is because unpaid carers support the many.

You have conflated two issues. Caring for an elderly relative / child with a disability -v- caring for an adult for 40+ years. However, I do agree that there needs to be a sensible discussion about this, because the 40+ years, with the NHS and Social Services outsourcing 'informal care' to families, can't continue.

Examples of care I have to provide for my adult son:
Wake nights during volatile seizure activity
Administration of emergency meds (controlled drugs, sometimes invasively) and oxygen
Manual handling (lifting, turning, carrying)
Dealing with medical emergencies such as life threatening psychosis and violence.

You think that should attract a 'benefit' of something like £83 pw? For decades?

Hi

I currently employ PAs on behalf of my son, and have done for the last 10+ years. I know you were one, but that's not quite the same as managing them. A personal budget was considered - but the wait time to go through the bureaucratic system rendered it useless, and that's with someone who has legal expertise working together with a family member who's a social worker. In fact, irony of ironies, FiL was one of the redoubtable buggers who actually led on the development and introduction of Direct Payments, both nationally and locally. He worked as a director for an advocacy agency for decades.

He asked for more support, it wasn't his 'wishes' that limited his support. He just wanted to stay in his own home, where he'd lived for nearly 40 years, because his wife had recently died. This isn't about 'wishes', this is about choice.

You talk as if the 'solutions' are in place and it's the fault of the disabled people or their family members that these aren't actioned. The solutions are only there in theory, not in practice. There's a whole body of research that bears this out.

I’m very surprised to read this. I was told that a fostering couple; one can work full time and a single person could work part time? Plus I always thought foster allowance is tax free? Assuming it’s area dependent?

You are deliberately missing the point that families were first part of tribes, then of "villages" then "community" . The atomisation encouraged by the current capitalist model and enabled by isolationist technology is an unprecedented change and the psychological impact of it has yet to be fully measured or realised.

For example, the phrase "it takes a village to raise a child" isn't mythical in origin.

If the state wants all able-bodied adults to be in work, it reduces the ability of family to step up, and heads towards having to outsource care that people, (usually women, but not always) were able to because financial pressures were different. Outsourced care then becomes charged at a premium, and outstrips in many cases the advantages of the family earning. State provision is tightly budgeted, private provision costs more than the state is willing to provide, and what is earned by working family members is sucked into a corporate vortex, with poor outcomes for the allegedly cared for, despite best efforts.

For all we are allegedly "advanced" while profiteering is the basic driver of the economy, real time benefits of working are reducing to an almost serfdom level.

It is not entitlement to expect state support if you are holding up your end of the bargain, and you are still out of pocket and care provision is inadequate.

And yes, there is alot of oblique undertones of Scrooge mentality seeping into politics and the public mentality by virtue of carefully crafted propaganda, and it is an extreme "right wing" mentality.

There's plenty of hypocrisy in religion, but those that do at least try to follow Christ's (alleged) teachings (disclaimer, not religious myself) often have strong community based and charitable movements within them, which may come with faith based strings, but then so does state provision, in terms of practical condionality. Families congregate together and while it might be a "family matter" to care for those who need it, the wider community is often involved. It may be to get the pearly gate brownie points, but it does a necessary job.

I don't recognise a world where callous negligence and brutality was a universal norm, otherwise Dickens wouldn't have had sources for his Tiny Tim character. There wouldn't have been alms for the poor. Historical solutions might not have measured up to the higher standards we recognise as fundamentally beneficial to individuals and wider society, but that's what progress is about - it starts with something and evolves.

I have Libertarian friends with whom I can't discuss these things because their "small state" Utopia is unviable without dismantling the current system and engaging in proper redistribution of wealth through the functionality of the economy, which nobody wants as the fallout would be long term pain and unpredictable gain.

If we've got this far why is it beyond us to adapt our ever more quickly changing society and culture to make things more equitable. Not everyone wants to hustle their way into the VIP billionaire's club, for myself, a stab at survival and less living in a state of perpetual dread due to obsolescence would be a start.

Fair enough! We don't have to agree. I think it is a matter of objective fact though and evidenced through the lack of welfare state systems or other comparable systems in other countries. To be honest, it isn't even true to say that there is a correlation between strong religious ethos in a country that has some focus on caring for the vulnerable and the development of a system at a societal level that cares for the weak and vulnerable. The most comprehensive systems are certainly not in the most religious countries.

As I said, respectfully I don't agree with your assertions.

Look around the world and there are many religious countries that don't see care as the responsibility of society at large. It is very much a family matter. The same goes for our history as a country. You are rewriting history and misrepresenting other countries to suggest otherwise. It simply isn't the correct to suggest that a family is the same as a state or even smaller community just at a smaller scale. It's clear that the level of vested interest and emotion involved is fundamentally different.

The idea that care is somehow a burden that we should all share by financially funding people to care for their loved ones is what is different and a relatively new concept.

I respectfully disagree - all religions preach this. If you don't (yet) have a state, you still have a community. Feel free to criticise the suggestion nation->state->community->tribe->family

I find the idea that it's a recent invention not only an insult to history, but as serving a slightly negative agenda. "We shouldn't be doing that, after all we never used to" which is peddled by the right wing fans in the UK.

Of course our ancestors cared for their relatives and close friends. I never suggested otherwise. Did the state or wider society pay them for this though? No. That's my point. The idea that care is somehow a burden that we should all share by financially funding people to care for their loved ones is what is different and a relatively new concept. How far the concept goes is what is being tested. Some on this thread have suggested that they could just give up caring and leave the care of their loved ones to the state. We obviously wouldn't be able to afford this as a country but neither can we realistically afford to compensate people for the care they provide their loved ones in the way that many would like. It will fundamentally go back to the question of who is responsible for care. The state and wider society or you as an individual and your family/personal support network. The latter is unpalatable to many but the former may be unaffordable.

Are you a carer?

This! They are your relatives you are looking after. I am glad people don't have to suffer alone anymore and that some help is given. However it is that - some help - not a God given right.

. It is literally only in the past one hundred years or so that we have begun to fundamentally reshape this with the introduction of the welfare state etc.

Sorry, but that's nonsense. Archaeologists have found human remains displaying indisputable evidence that well over 3,000 years ago our ancestors were nursing and caring for individuals who would otherwise have died.

Compassion wasn't invented 100 years ago. Even if it is a luxury we can't afford.

I’d agree I think for a lot of history the old, the disabled, the ill would be left behind to die. The workhouse, the poorhouse, the mercy of the church a psalm for supper anyone?

The welfare state is a very modern phenomenon. Its. It’s very limited to just a few countries. Is there anywhere in the world that family carers are given reasonable remuneration for services rendered?

In a civilised society with technological advances we should be able to make it work. You’re right in that historically the weak and vulnerable wouldn’t survive long but thankfully we don’t view the world in such a medieval way now.

If it wasn’t for the advancement of modern medicine then any one of us would only be an infection away from dying, but luckily we have antibiotics.

Such is the advancement of modern medicine that they’re constantly coming up with innovative ways to keep people alive longer, yet in the next breath they’re saying we can’t afford to look after the people that we’re keeping alive as long as possible - The sad irony is that some
people genuinely want to end their life, due to suffering and pain, yet they law says no, keep them alive, pump them with drugs but we can’t look after them.

The whole system needs an overhaul. The rich get richer, whilst the poor get poorer as per.

It's 'wimmin's work', so they should be doing it for free. I think that's basically how governments view it.

It's 'wimmin's work', so they should be doing it for free. I think that's basically how governments view it.

@MistressoftheDarkSide I actually disagree fundamentally with you because you seem to assume that the default setting for humans is that we are able to have children and age with enjoyment and security. This is absolutely not the norm for humans and not how we are evolutionary coded at all. We are meant to struggle to survive and the vulnerable and old wouldn't survive for long for the majority of our existence. It is literally only in the past one hundred years or so that we have begun to fundamentally reshape this with the introduction of the welfare state etc. Even then, the model was built on there being relatively few people needing care and there being a large population of young and working people to shoulder the burden. We are entering unprecedented times with the shift in demographics and an increase in demand on the system and we don't know how this will work out. It's wrong though to suggest that carers would have historically been looked after and supported by society as this isn't really the case for the vast majority of our existence.

i can't believe people actually comparing having children and cb to being a carer.

The people saying ‘they can’t afford to increase carers allowance’ need to understand that they definitely can’t afford for carers to start saying that they can no longer provide the care to their disabled relatives.

You're absolutely right, and they rely on people actually giving a shit about their loved ones to keep them over a barrel. If everyone did refuse, I hate to think what the "solution" would actually be.

Carers Allowance and the pittance they pay, has been a long standing scandal.

If all relatives refused to care for their disabled relatives, it would practically bankrupt the country, with professional care costs. 🤷‍♀️

The way our entire economy and way modern life works means it's becoming increasingly difficult to work for a living beyond "survival" and planning for care down the line is a pipe dream for most.

Anyone in a "family" situation can do their best to factor in all the variables, but when curve balls strike sometimes even the best mitigation is stymied by economic reality. It's all well and good expecting people to make responsible choices, but the fact of the matter is that if you're just about managing or poor to start with, it only takes one disaster to tip one into crisis, and that crisis isn't just financial it's emotional and psychological too.

What is the point of life if we cannot follow our evolutionary coding, which for most is to partner up, have children, and have some enjoyment and security in that? The current system divides us up and makes us face impossible choices - vmcare for your loved one or work and have to partner up with, or relinquish control to strangers?

The carers allowance issue is one that highlights a nightmare of our own economic making where constant economic expansion demands we pander to it but rewards aren't fairly distributed. Then the state steps in, mainly from the bread and circuses perspective, and people get stuck in purgatory. Our modern world tries to over-ride humanity itself. And we'll see yet more chaos with technology and AI being used with all it's lack of nuance and tendency to "hallucinate". Which is a different argument I suppose, but the more it's used in areas like social work and justice, the more problems will be caused, not least with accountability.