Key Consultations
Already this year there has been a considerable amount of legislation published which impacts on the lives of carers (in England and Wales only). Here at The Trust we have assessed the various papers and published the following briefs, which summarise the policies and also provide you, as carers, with the opportunity to feed your comments directly in to the consultation.
All the consultative documents are available to download as word documents below.
You can feed back to us in two ways: either add your comments in the comment box at the bottom of this page, with the appropriate title, ie. 'White Paper Comments', or email them directly to Peter Tihanyi, our Head of Policy.
Consultation document on Government White Paper: Our health, our care, our say, A new direction for community services
Along with other leading advocates for national social care, we are invited to make recommendations on the proposals within the recently-published White Paper on social care and health.
The White Paper, published January 30, 2006, has a section on carers. The Trust welcomes the Government's emphasis on a new deal for carers but is mindful of the mechanisms that need to be in place to ensure the proposals will be implemented at local level.
Welfare Reform Green Paper - A New Deal for Welfare: Empowering People to Work
The Green Paper on Welfare Reform debates the methods in receiving incapacity benefit and in helping back into work a range of service-users. It exempts those with severe health conditions or disabilities but is not specifically targeted at carers.
Nevertheless there has been some anxiety about the Green Paper amongst carers not least because many of them are receiving Incapacity Benefit in their own right.
Download the full document: A New Deal for Welfare: Empowering People to Work (206 KB).
Work and Families - Choice & Flexibility: Draft Regulations, The Flexible Working Regulations 2006
Following an extensive consultation in October 2005 the Government introduced the Work & Families Bill in Parliament which is now in its second reading in the House of Lords.
Several of the commitments will be delivered through secondary legislation which are being published in draft to give stakeholders the opportunity to comment. There are two sets of draft regulation, however only the Flexible Working Regulations are relevant to carers.
Download the full document: Draft Regulations, The Flexible Working Regulations 2006 (192 KB).