That is a fair point by the national carers organisations, which know how the current carer’s assessments are carried out. Although a carer’s assessment such as the adult carer support plan can involve building up information and can be an iterative process, which can be reviewed, it can also be quite a low-profile form of assessment. It depends on the carer’s situation and on finding out from the carer or young carer the impact of the caring on them and the personal outcomes that they would like to achieve—which brings us back to your earlier remarks—to be able to continue caring in good health, to have a life alongside their caring responsibilities and, in the case of young carers, to have a childhood.
Carer’s assessments can take many forms. We are aware that, as the national carers organisations have pointed out, a carer’s assessment and an adult carer support plan can take longer, especially when there are complex needs and issues to explore. However, we also know from the returns that we have received and from research that the process can be much shorter if the needs are not as demanding.
As for the question of how the unit costs have been derived, it would be a difficult, challenging and detailed exercise to try to build up a unit cost based on the different types of assessment, the number of days it takes to carry them out and so on. We know from the returns that some assessments are carried out by social workers, some by health professionals, some by social care assistants and some by the voluntary sector, and as the financial memorandum itself points out, the efficiencies involved need to be looked at.
The financial memorandum sets out three possible unit costs, with £176 at the top end. I recently spoke to colleagues in London about the estimates in their impact assessment for the provisions for carers in the Care Act 2014, and they also sought returns from local authorities in England on unit costs. The English unit cost is presented in the financial memorandum as £100 but, based on returns from 120 of England’s 152 local authorities—or a 79 per cent return rate, which is very good indeed—the median cost for different types of assessment is now £116, which is much lower than the high-end cost of £176 for Scotland set out in the financial memorandum.
With regard to the returns from local authorities and the unit costs for the current carer assessment, only two authorities out of all those that made returns presented a unit cost of more than £300. Four or five presented unit costs of less than £100, with the rest congregating in the middle between £100 and £250 or so, and we derived from that an estimate of £176. That said, we acknowledge that the unit cost will be variable, depending not only on whether the assessment is an iterative one or one involving a much simpler process but on whether it relates to complex or more straightforward needs and whether it involves rurality, travelling time and so on.
Some local authorities—I do not know how many—are beginning to look at telephone or online assessments, but they would be valid only in certain circumstances. After all, carers value face-to-face interventions. One local authority terms its assessment a conversation, another calls it a journey and a number call it a carer support plan, but the point is that that kind of face-to-face intervention is valued.
It is difficult to look across the piece, and we have done our best with the information that has been presented. Concern was expressed that we had not taken account of the figures over £300, but the fact is that only two of the returns were at that level. Although the median unit cost in England is £116, we agree that there is merit in considering whether the unit cost should be increased towards £176 to take account of rurality and other issues, but that issue would be explored by the finance group that Julie McKinney has referred to.