---

Carers

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and join him in thanking Crossroads and recognising its work. I also recognise his contribution to promoting the cause of carers. I note that my local authority is probably better off than many others because it has its own organisation that is dedicated to helping young carers. However, it deals with only 155 such carers, and there are estimated to be 2,000 in Sandwell, so if my area is relatively well off, it is frightening to think what the situation could be in other parts of the country. I said that I would talk about the difficulties of identifying carers, and my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) rightly outlined a number of reasons why young people are unwilling to come forward and acknowledge that they are carers. However, there are mechanisms and organisations that should enable us to identify young carers. It has been suggested to me that GPs are well placed to identify families in which a parent has some disability or health problem and to be able to say, from their knowledge of that family, from where that parent is getting support. In most cases, it will be from the children in the family. I am informed that GPs have an obligation to keep a register of carers, but they do not seem to be obliged to use that register for any other purpose. That is a suitable area for investigation and recommendation on ensuring that the information that GPs hold can be passed on to an appropriate body that would enable young carers to get support. Similarly, teachers will often notice that young people are not staying on for after-school activities, are not doing homework, or are showing signs of sleeplessness or other symptoms of a lifestyle that is distracting them from basic educational involvement. Sandwell Young Carers, in my area, gives training sessions with schools, but that is not obligatory, and I wonder how many other areas have similar training sessions. That could also be considered as a way of assisting with identification. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg) mentioned the needs of young carers. What is coming back to me is that carers need recognition of their caring role, which gives them a certain status and sense of responsibility that should be acknowledged by society. Rather than being some sort of stigma, it is a mark of credit. My hon. Friend also mentioned respite care, which is essential to young people who have to deal not only with the pressures of full-time education, but with the very difficult pressure of what is often a problematic home situation. Those young people are also often deprived of peer group support and the social interaction, perhaps of playing with others, that would be normal for a person of their age. They are socially isolated, but have a higher level of responsibility than one would normally expect a young person of their age to bear. Having respite, being able to go to an organisation where they can meet others in the same situation, and perhaps getting a holiday somewhere, when they would never otherwise have a holiday, is essential to the well-being of those young people. Education was highlighted in the report. Many young carers lose out either because they cannot attend school as often as they should or because they cannot participate in the full range of activities at school. Some of them find it difficult to get to school because, unlike many young people with parents who take them to schools, they have no transport. That is a significant issue for young people with caring responsibilities. Likewise, they have no grant income to deal with any special needs that they might have. Those problems are specific to this age group, and, unless they are resolved, they will undermine both the Government's investment in the wider education system and the futures of a significant proportion of our young people today. I asked my local young carers' association which single thing, if anything, would help them to highlight their specific problems within the vast range of problems that carers have, and would help them to promote solutions, and the first thing that was put to me was that young carers need a dedicated national organisation. That is not to criticise the excellent Children's Trust or the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, which do a good job in taking on board young carers' issues. However, a specific range of needs is covered by local government, education departments, the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions, none of which, unfortunately, has ownership of those matters. In those circumstances, it is crucial to have a dedicated organisation looking at Departments and tying policies together that will deal with young peoples' problems. Although I recognise that not all my remarks might be in the Minister's specific remit, I hope that he will take them away and feed them into the forthcoming Green Paper on health and social care, so that the matter can be seriously considered and measures implemented to promote the interests of this specific group. In doing so, I commend the section in the report on the trip to Australia, which mentions Australian respite and information services. Australia seems to have a much better developed process for identifying and assisting young people with these responsibilities than us. It is important that the Government look at that particular model to see how it could be replicated to deal with the problems we are discussing. The needs of this particular group have been consistently under-recognised. The provisions to deal with those needs have been, at best, patchy and, at worst, non-existent. Dealing with the problem would provide enormous potential benefits both for the family life and the educational opportunities of the young people concerned. There are also, of course, benefits to the community at large arising from young people having a more fulfilled life and being better able to develop skills and contribute to the community. Although not all of the specific points I have made might be within the Minister's remit, I ask him to take them away and pursue them with other Departments, so that we can at last change the life prospects of what we know is a minimum of 165,000 young people in this country.