Susanna Questions Gillian Keegan on What the Government is Doing to Support Carers

uh education secretary Jillian Keegan was minister for care and mental health for a year of that time, from September 2021, at the time Derek received 24-hour

support

from home and in just one moment Kate gay has some

questions

for you, Jillian Keegan. but just before we get to that, we want to talk to you about

what

you're talking about this morning. You have money for high-need places, not in the care system, but in schools. This is for children with special educational needs. As I understand it, this money is being announced, it was first announced in the 2021 spending review, so it's not new money, it's £2.6bn, which is to build more schools for children with special educational needs and more places. in conventional or specialized schools, so that's 60,000 new places and this is the last TR of its 850 million, which is the last launch of

what

is going to build many more schools with special educational needs, so we will announce where we are also in the next weeks, so it's the last part of that and it's really important because any of your viewers who have children with special educational needs know that they may struggle. of them to get a place or adequate provisional

support

for their children, so we have focused a lot on developing an improvement plan that has not only achieved 60,000 more places, and we will be the first

government

to ever do this look at the capacity look what the need is and then invest in new places but also more educational psychologists 7,000 more breasts more speech and language training so there is a comprehensive plan to ensure that yes we have had a huge increase in children with special educational needs and that's probably because we know more, we know more how to diagnose, but we really want to make sure that we have the right services in place to support parents.

Could you address the continuing flaws in our social system? care system you were minister of state for care uh from September 2021 to September 2022 and that date is very important because as you know our Kate has a documentary documenting the last year of Derek's life. Kate is here with us this morning, um, you. I have the minister there, Kate, who knows that she was in charge for a year of the time you cared for Derek. What do you think you'd like to hear from Dillian Keegan about some of those feelings? Well, I've talked to him. You have an i jilan Keegan about this when you were a minister in that position and I have spoken to other ministers responsible for this over time, um, that Derek needed care because unfortunately one of the things about care is that actually you know that You only really feel it when you're in it, which is one of the big challenges and what this documentary is about because it will reach all of us, right?

We will need care or be caregivers at some point. our lives, but I guess one of the problems is that we seem to have reached a point where we feel like there's no solution to this, like all the parts are going, oh, okay, oh, there's no money, there's no this. , there is no that, but Basically, having support when you are at your most vulnerable is our fundamental principle of society. The NHS is extraordinary, it does it brilliantly and I think we will all fight to keep it that way, but when you leave the hospital you are alone. and you can fight and fight and fight, but the system somehow makes you feel like you're always losing, so we all have to pull together.

Why do you think well? First of all, this is the first time I've seen you, Kate, or seen you. you're on the screen and I just want to say I'm so sorry for your loss and you know it's tragic, you know what happened in your circumstances, but you know, I know there are millions of people who are caring for your loved ones. some right now, they're probably tuning into your show and a lot of them, you know, are struggling to get the support that they need. I think it's the foundation and it's true that the social care system is a really important part of our system and we Do you know any plans to improve our social care system?

But he does, what are those plans? So the first one is the workforce, the most important thing and one of the things that I think is key. So that people can't get the support they need, there are enough people working in social care and staying on social care, so there is but also for unpaid

carers

and a lot more support in terms of respite because we are absolutely dependent on people to care for. to their loved ones and if they don't get the support they need then you know we would really suffer even more and you talked about the NHS because it's actually all part of the same system.

I was often in a hospital last Friday. You know, when discharging patients, the issue is getting the right social care package, so it's very important that we get it right. It's largely a workforce issue, making sure we have to do it. There's a lot more money going into, you know, building the workforce. Also the ability to progress in careers so people can move forward at work. Can I interrupt? You have been in power since 2010. You talk about it as if it were suddenly a problem that had fallen on you. Why are we in this? Situation 14 years after being in

government

, these are huge demographic changes that are impacting people in most Western countries and you know that these are things that you know, when you say that it is a long-term problem and that it is difficult resolving.

So there's a stand on the steps of Downing Street in 2019, he said he had a plan he was going to implement, why can't the police do it? Not political parties, as I was wondering before, why do we treat this like a political football where conservatives say that? Labour's care plans are a tax on death and Labor says Conservative care plans are a tax on dementia. Why can't everyone just put a line that is exactly the same in all their manifestos? We agree that this is what we are going to do right now. If we win the election right, if you remember, we did that and we added extra taxes to specifically pay for some of the social care reforms and some of the injustices, we see National Insurance going up, yes, and your chancellor has just cut National Insurance .

Sure, yeah and of course we had that surge and we had that and then we had to deal with covid and then we had to deal with other things so you literally just eliminated the additional support no we still have some of the existing support for the social care, but you know that was part of the model and we still have, you know, various parts of that were still in place, one of the most important parts and this is another injustice in our system and if you remember Theresa's election May, where she also tried to address the issue and it backfired horribly for most people, but most people, like Kate said, don't know much about the system until you're in the system, so most?

People don't know that you actually know that you have to fund your own welfare, to a certain extent, and you know that's something about our system that a lot of people don't understand very succinctly in tonight's documentary, when and her. she says until this happened to her and Derek they thought the care system was there to get them uh and what they found out was that it was there to get them um and like you I'm sure you know the latest opinion The poll on this has Shown that satisfaction with UH Care social care is at its lowest level in the UK ever at 13%, only 133% of people are satisfied with it.

We'll have to end this interview with you here because I want to talk to Kate about the documentary tonight, but you accept that you have a mountain to climb, right? We have a huge social program for care reform that also includes 327 million to help people like uh in Kate's position and it's also looking at Workforce, which is one of the key things to address the crampons, get the ropes out and get started. to escalate because we have to fix it, thank you Minister, thank you.