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| TX: 23.10.08 - Phil Hope - Social Care Minister PRESENTERS: WINIFRED ROBINSON AND PETER WHITE |
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| Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON As we reported yesterday the people who run social services throughout the country are meeting in Liverpool. The care minister - Phil Hope - will be addressing their conference today. He was due to appear as minister for the third sector - that's charities and voluntary organisations - but thanks to the recent reshuffle he's now minister of state for care services. He replaces Ivan Lewis who became a frequent visitor to You and Yours during our month long look at the crisis in social care, that was back in January. Peter White is also in Liverpool. A move from the third sector brief to social care could signal the government's wish to see charities more involved in providing care, a point Peter put to the minister. HOPE I do think the third sector have an essential critical role to play in whatever solutions we come forward. We know that and it's always got to be about a partnership - a partnership between central government, local government and third sector organisations, indeed the private sector as well. WHITE The big news to come out of the conference is a review of the eligibility criteria, which are described in this report as so flawed that they have to be changed even before the green paper is published because the changes will take too long to come into force, what do you think about that? HOPE I suppose two things about that report. Firstly, there are some specific recommendations about revising guidance. We will be producing revised guidance early next year to reflect some of the concerns that have been raised, not least in terms of how we respond to individual budgets and personalisation, as being the new approach for delivering care services. But of course they also raise longer term questions about how the system might look in future. And as that is so important that will be all part of the green paper that we publish next year that will look at both how the money is raised, how the money is allocated and how the services can pursue this personalisation agenda in the future. WHITE I've been covering social services and social care, although we didn't call it that, for over 30 years and there's always been buzz words and when I started it was "generic", meaning I think moving away from specialisations. Now it's "personalisation", what does that mean to you? HOPE I've been involved in trying to develop these kind of things for a long time. For me personalisation, it's about values really, fundamentally it's about people living independent lives, rather than being always as it were dependent, in the sense that they don't make choices about themselves, then having choices and having more control. And as a result of that feeling empowered, feeling able to do things that everybody else takes for granted. And I can think of an example where as an older person, 84, used to enjoy fishing, two years he stopped being able to enjoy his fishing because he couldn't drive etc., he's using his individual budget to pay for someone to take him fishing. And suddenly he was thoroughly depressed and now he's doing the thing he really enjoys doing the most. This is an example from Harrow Council that I heard about yesterday. It's a fantastic example of where somebody just wants to do the things that everybody else takes for granted. He had that taken away from him by virtue of his condition, his disability, individual budgets has given it back to him and it's transforming his personal well being. WHITE People perhaps who've been on the wrong end of the system for quite a long time they still worry about this, it sounds encouraging, it sounds a warm word, some people are still worried that this might be a way perhaps of in the end seeing a cheaper service and maybe it's easier to clip something off a budget that's personalised than it is off a big budget that's across a whole department. HOPE For me this isn't about anything to do with cutting budgets, this is about improving people's quality of life, that's what matters. If that's what this achieves then we'll have succeeded. WHITE What's your relationship like with the Treasury because you're going to have to be talking to them quite a lot aren't you? HOPE Well I think at the moment the Treasury have got a number of items on their plate to deal with. We have good relationships. WHITE Those problems that are on its plate, those are exactly the ones which could get in the way of some of the solutions that we were talking about with confidence maybe even eight or nine months ago. HOPE Although there are some immediate pressures on things like the stock market and while we're going through difficult economic times that is a sort of one year, two year problem which we're grappling with now and which we will get through. But what we're talking about with the green paper is right for 15, 20 years. Now I think if you take a look at prices and stock markets and all that kind of thing these things over a longer period, although you have peaks and troughs along the way, there's a pretty sustained position and it's that that I think we need to be the basis for future planning, rather than worrying about some immediate ups and downs, however significant they might be. WHITE What are your personal experiences of the social care system, either for yourself or your family? HOPE My father died earlier this year and he spent six months with rheumatoid arthritis and prostate cancer. And for my brother and my two sisters and my mum it was quite a lot of things to have to deal with because he fell, broke his hip, I mean it was almost a sort of casebook example. He went into hospital, got his hips done and then picked up MRSA. That spent him longer in time in hospital than we wanted him to be. He then went into a rehab community hospital where he got some superb care there. We got him out of there into his own home, back with me mum, we had care support there, that lasted about a week and he just didn't sustain, went back into rehab, back into acute care, around the system. So we had to deal with all the issues about planning his care, getting him support, decision making being what they wanted and going through all the form filling that everybody else goes through. WHITE Clearly that's a very personal experience but presumably that - you would expect that to inform your tenure of this job? HOPE That experience with my dad gave me a huge insight into some of the challenges that I think we've still got to sort out, particularly as we try to integrate health and social care, so that when people go through the system it's much more seamless than it is at present. ROBINSON Phil Hope speaking to Peter White. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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