Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 2:38 pm on 17 May 2017.
When you initially see that there’s a right for carers to have statutory leave, fantastic, and then you see it’s an unpaid year off work, and then you realise that that is going to be completely out of the reach of most people who are carers, unfortunately. I don’t know many carers who can afford to take a year off work, and it just seems again that it’s a Conservative policy from the UK Government that is an empty promise, but which also benefits those who have, and so benefits the few, not the many, in the sense that only the highest-earning people and those who are in families that are already wealthy are going to realistically be able to take a full year off work completely unpaid. So, in that sense, I don’t think it will be taken up by huge amounts of people in Wales. So, what we do need to do is ensure that the respite care, and the things that are in our gift in the Assembly to deliver, really do meet the needs of carers right across Wales. And, actually, we know as well that carers find it very difficult to find employment anyway, so many carers are out of work because of the nature of the caring responsibilities they have. So, there’s a role for us as well to look at what we can do to make employers in Wales more carer-friendly, more flexible, to allow carers to return to work. And we’re also looking at interesting projects to see how we can perhaps look at whether or not carers are able to access some kind of accreditation for the caring work that they do. So, it might be that, at a point in the future, they’re able to use the experience and expertise that they’ve gained as carers to take that step, then, into paid employment in the caring field.