Carers, Equal Opportunities and Lifelong Learning
Article for Adults Learning and Rethink
Dr Hywel Francis MP describes how his Private Member’s Bill hopes to give the UK’s 7 million carers lifelong learning opportunities.
December 5th was National Carers Rights Day and it turned out to be a defining moment for me. As the Member of Parliament for Aberavon I was meeting some young parents of children with disabilities: it was the day after I had come second in the Private Member’s Ballot.
I saw in their faces and heard in their voices the same mixture of anxiety and hope which my wife Mair and I felt nearly twenty-four years ago when our son Sam, who had Down’s Syndrome, was born. Our conversations were dominated that morning by their desire to have a life beyond their caring responsibilities, particularly through lifelong learning opportunities, whether they led to job opportunities or not.
I was reminded of Raymond Williams’ words in his journey of hope, in those desperate years of the 1980s. I felt these parents, these carers, were searching for ‘resources of hope’, as the posthumously published collection of essays by Raymond Williams was called. In the middle of the meeting I phoned Carers UK to tell them that I had decided on a carers Private Members Bill which would focus on the lifelong learning needs of carers. And so began my journey of hope too, through Parliament, over the subsequent three months, and more, I hope.
I called my maiden speech in June 2001 a journey of hope from social exclusion to social justice: it was on the theme of the need for citizenship rights for people with disabilities and their carers. I spoke in particular of their lack of learning and work opportunities. But it is only since I began my preparation for what eventually became my Carers (Equal Opportunities) Bill, more popularly known as ‘Sam’s Bill’ in memory of our son who died in 1997, that I begin to see carers as a distinct and arguably the most socially excluded group in our society, particularly in relation to lifelong learning.
In all my years of involvement in what I still hopefully call radical adult education I had always focused on socially excluded groups, initially trade unionists and subsequently, through my development of the concept of the Community University of the Valleys, such other groups as unemployed miners, women returners and people with disabilities.
However I had never thought of carers as socially excluded, partly because many of them did avail themselves, with difficulty, of my University’s community based provision. In locating university part-time degree opportunities in remote valley communities, with crèche, transport, library, Information Communication Technology (ICT) and on-line support, the concept of the Community University has, over time, successfully reached out to potential adult learners previously excluded from Higher Education. There is no doubt that a similar strategy could be developed for carers’ home study.
Through my Bill, which has broad cross-party support, a new social and excluded group, carers, have been identified and could be targeted. Recent ICT advances, electronic learning at such dynamic Higher Education institutions as the Open University (OU), the National Health Service University (NHSU), the University of Glamorgan, Swansea University and London South Bank University, has meant that carers can now consider accessing a very wide range of quality learning opportunities from their own homes.
The carer’s lot is not only invariably heavy and stressful, it is also prone to unpredictability, short-term crises and is almost always tied to the home for very long periods.
In an era when widening participation in Higher Education, and more generally lifelong learning, is being strongly encouraged by Government policies and legislation, arguably the largest socially excluded group in our society is hopefully, through my Bill, to be removed from the shadows.
My own local authority, Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council has 22,000 carers, the highest proportion of carers per head of population of any authority in the UK. It also has the enviable record of having the greatest number of ‘heavy-end’carers (that is carers providing over 50 hours of weekly care) per head of population of any UK authority. By contrast, we have a very low HE participation. It is not rocket science to conclude that there is a direct connection between these two phenomena. Is it not startling that constituencies like Cardiff Central have as many undergraduates as my authority has carers? To begin to remedy that unfair and inequitable situation is my modest challenge for life after the Bill.
The Bill will require local authorities and local health boards to work together to help carers to build lives beyond their caring responsibilities. Lynn Coleman, co-ordinator of the Neath Port Talbot Carers Enablers’ project, as a carer herself, said at the Parliamentary launch of my Bill on 26th January, that all carers wanted was an ‘ordinary life’ and carers’ demands were very modest, very often only wishing to access appropriate information on carers’ rights.
That said, we already know that the most advanced e-learning strategies in HE with the University of Glamorgan’s E College Wales, Swansea’s Connecting Communities Cymru and the Open University’s decades of open and distant learning has widened opportunities generally for tens of thousands of students. Now we have a new challenge: not only can we overcome what the Irish call ‘the tyranny of distance’ but what I would call a ‘the caring fortress’at home.
Most recent research has shown that one of the biggest factors contributing to economic inactivity is the inability of carers to return to learning, training or work. The TUC’s report Full employment – the next steps has emphasised this: it is gratifying therefore that the TUC’s general secretary Brendan Barber has welcomed the provisions enshrined in the Bill with the words:
‘The role of unpaid carers in the UK is often undervalued. This Bill will ensure that important opportunities for access to access lifelong learning is at last recognised.’
The willingness of the Open University, the one institution in the UK which has led the way in home-study, to support the Bill is evident from Professor David Vincent its Pro-Vice Chancellor who wrote emphathetically to me:
‘…through programmes in the School of Health and Social Welfare Care carers will also find career paths that build on their caring experiences if that is what they wish.’
‘This Bill will help many carers find the ways and means and the practical support to pursue their own personal development. They will be able to access, perhaps for the first time, the very opportunities that so many of is take for granted.’
More recently, other Universities have focussed on the link between e-learning and personal, or community-based study. For example, Swansea University’s Connecting Communities Cymru Project is committed to developing an E Curriculum with a network of local communities. More specifically it aims to develop,
‘Innovative online learning programmes that help learners progress from informal learning to degree level, as appropriate to their needs;…..learning that supports both personal and community development and raises people’s aspirations of what they can achieve.’
More widely the University of Glamorgan extends this approach across the whole of Wales through its e-college Wales, one of the largest e-learning projects in Europe. Flexibility is so flexible, the claim is,
‘(You) learn when you want. Because E College Wales has no fixed classes that you have to attend, you can study whenever you want, at a time that suits you, during the course. This allows you to structure your study around work, social or family commitment or favourite TV programmes!’
The London South Bank University (LSBU) and the newly established National Health Service (NHSU) together, and separately, are dynamic educational institutions committed to using ICT in such a way as to meet the challenges raised by the constrained and often stressful lives of carers. Such institutions recognise that carers often need basic skills, upskilling, refresher type courses, and not just standard educational courses.
LSBU has a particular emphasis on health and social care with new programmes in early years education and teacher training. LSBU is the largest single provider for the NHS in London including occupational and physical therapy. Without stereotyping carers, these may be the kind of course, refined and redefined by such bodies as Carers UK, that could be of benefit to carers. They would be able to build on their skills while caring, with the prospect of developing careers if, at any time, their caring responsibilities end.
Within LSBU there exists the London Language and Literacy Unit, which has developed programmes on parental involvement in education. The fact that large numbers of parents and carers from a wide range of educational, social and cultural backgrounds have benefited from such non-accredited and accredited programmes indicates the enormous latent potential that clearly exists for the tens of thousands of carers who wish to return to study.
But before we get carried away with what can be achieved, we are only half way along our Parliamentary journey of hope. Once we complete that journey, the real work will begin. It is only then that we will start to address equal opportunities for carers in their lifelong learning needs by ensuring that a democratic dialogue between carers and providers is created.
Dr Hywel Francis was elected the Labour MP for Aberavon in 2001 before which he was the Professor of Continuing Education at Swansea University where he established the Community University of the Valleys. He is an immediate past Vice-President of NIACE.
