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	TX: 16.11.04 - Call You and Yours Part I - Carers 听 PRESENTER: PETER WHITE

	THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT.听 BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 91热爆 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WHITE On Call You and Yours recent cases in the news, such as the elderly man abandoned at an Essex hospital by his family and the parents of a girl with Asperger's who were driven to a suicide pact because they couldn't cope, have highlighted the immense strain that carers can feel. Support for carers is clearly something You and Yours listeners feel strongly - at the time of last year's Queen's speech we asked you to contribute your ideas for new legislation and more measures to help carers came out as one of your top suggestions. With three out of five of us becoming carers for an elderly, sick or disabled family member or friend at some point in our lives, it's a problem we can ill afford to ignore - You and Yours is not ignoring it. 听 Emily Holzhausen is from Carers UK and she's with me, that's an organisation which supports carers. Emily, first of all, could you outline us what help carers do get at the moment? 听 HOLZHAUSEN Well there's a whole range of support. There are benefits, for example, that you can apply for and the best way to find about that is to go to your local benefits agency - Carers' Allowance is the main benefit. And there are also services, either provided by social services or by voluntary organisations, like Crossroads, who can give you a bit of a break - an afternoon off caring. 听 WHITE So in which case why are carers so obviously upset, feel that they're not getting enough, that's already evident from the kind of calls we're getting? 听 HOLZHAUSEN Well it is true to say that they don't get enough. The first problem is that a lot of people don't know about their rights and entitlements and we have a telephone help line service - we get calls from carers every single day who missed out on benefits for a couple of years, don't know that support is out there. And it is also true to say that people who have extremely hard caring responsibilities - 24 hours a day, seven days a week - very demanding, often they don't get enough support. It sometimes just isn't out there, so actually they do need more. 听 WHITE And what kind of numbers are we talking about? 听 HOLZHAUSEN Well there's about 1.25 million carers who care for over 50 hours a week, which is quite significant. And every year you have about 2 million people becoming carers. 听 WHITE If these numbers are rising in the way they are, and I heard a figure of 13 million of us may be caring within a decade, what's that doing to the cost? 听 HOLZHAUSEN Well the cost - well I mean there's a notional cost of how much carers provide and it's about 脗拢57 billion a year, so if you took away every single carer that exists that's how much it would cost us all more in tax basically. And of course the more important that carers become in the future the costs too would go up. 听 WHITE This is at the heart of it though isn't it, should we actually be seeing it in those terms? You hear these figures saying that if all carers stopped caring then this is what it would cost the NHS but was that what the NHS was set up to do - it wasn't set up to take away all the caring from families was it? 听 HOLZHAUSEN No, not at all and a lot of families will still care and that's what we need them to do because clearly we couldn't afford for all carers to give up. But it is a good indication if you have a small proportion of carers who can't continue caring or don't wish to care because it will really badly affect their pensions or their job situation or they just can't do it because of their other family responsibilities, it does say to us as a nation actually we've got a bit of an economic problem on our hands, as well as a moral question about how people want to live and be supported in the community. 听 WHITE Emily Holzhausen thank you for the time being. Emily will be our guest throughout and that's very much what we want you to talk about - the longer term problems that this might pose. Is it right to expect someone to devote their life to providing care for a relative or friend and is it practical? Many of you are already telling us that you get precious little help, indeed we're getting very emotional calls from people but what could realistically be done to ease the strain - is it money, more respite care or do you have some imaginative solutions to these problems? Are sacrifices of this kind what being part of a family is about? Are we going to have to be less selfish if we're to solve the problem in the long term or are we going to have to find other patterns of living? Call us on 08700 100 444 or you can e-mail us via the website at bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours. Back to the Transcripts homepage Back to the You and Yours homepage The 91热爆 is not responsible for external websites

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