MONDAY 15 MAY 2000

MS ANA PALAZO«N, MR TOM MORAN AND MS J DIX

  520. Who do you think would have the responsibility of monitoring that they are providing a service which is good value for money?
  (Ms Palazo«n) The actual work that the Care and Repair agencies carry out is closely evaluated and monitored primarily through Care and Repair Cymru but in conjunction with the National Assembly. There is a very rigorous process of evaluation prior to any funds to the agencies. Both Age Concern Cymru and Help the Aged sit as co-opted members on the management committee of Care and Repair Cymru and also on the allocations sub-committee and the evaluations sub-committee. Each of the agencies has to undergo an extremely rigorous process of evaluation before any funding is recommended before the National Assembly. We only recommend funding for the next year. The evaluations of the agencies system is through reports that have to be filled out in accordance with what is asked. Each agency has to fill the same form out and it has to go through the Assembly. Also Care and Repair Cymru has commissioned on a regular basis outside customer satisfaction surveys that have been carried out by independent researchers in order to provide a completely objective and independent view as to whether or not people are getting value for money. To date that has demonstrated those people who are in the priority area, in other words people over 75, possibly single people and disabled people, are the ones who are receiving the service.

  521. I just want to pursue this point, Chairman. Once a grant application has been allowed to a household, shall we say, I think the words you used were "Care and Repair provide advice to obtain qualified contractors and reputable contractors" I would assume. Would you then expect Care and Repair to follow the whole job through or would the pensioner or disabled person be left on their own with the contractor? Would you expect Care and Repair to supervise and to make sure that it was indeed value for money?
  (Ms Palazo«n) Yes. Once the contractor has been put to work in a house, Care and Repair will be involved throughout the period to ensure that the contractor does complete the work to the standards and to the time limits expected. In some instances, perhaps more extreme instances, Care and Repair will work with the individual or the family to the point of making them realise that having work done to one's house can be very disruptive and in some instances it will find alternative accommodation for the person to go to as the work is carried out. That is in more extreme circumstances. Care and Repair will continue to supervise and monitor the work throughout the period of the repairs and we would expect them to do so.

  522. Thank you. We have received a lot of evidence about problems of social exclusion and housing, but not about homelessness in relation to older people. Could you tell us more about the scale and nature of the problem and the Homelessness Campaign that Help the Aged is involved in?
  (Ms Palazo«n) Yes, of course. The Help the Aged Campaign on homelessness has been based on research that has been done on a national level and not exclusively in Wales, so we do not have a picture particularly of what the situation is in Wales. Certainly overall in the UK our research has shown there are more people over 50 years of age sleeping rough than there are under the age of 25. Over the past 13 years the service has funded 30 per cent of people who sleep rough over 50 years of age. The mortality rate for certainly male rough sleepers is between 45 and 64 years of age, which is over 20 times the rate of the general male population. Again, how we define older homeless people has to be in that context. The homelessness campaign is a UK campaign which is identifying voluntary sector organisations that are working with homeless older people and basically it is doing two things. One is Action Research and providing grant aid in order to help organisations work closely with older people in preventative work and in resettlement of older people. The conditions and the circumstances that lead older people to become homeless are complex and different from circumstances that lead young people to become homeless. Also the way in which intervention has to take place is different. Homeless older people tend not to accept services from agencies that are only short-term, that perhaps mix older people with younger people who have drug related problems or severe alcohol related problems. Many homeless older people feel very uncomfortable in that sort of environment and that is why they go back into homelessness, back into sleeping rough, because the services have not provided for their more specific needs. We feel that each local authority should have a homelessness strategy that is going to include the very specific needs of homeless older people. What the campaign is doing is very much looking through Action Research at those organisations that are providing good practice and trying to spread that practice around the country. One of the things that we believe needs to be done in Wales is to look more specifically into the situation of homeless older people because we do not have an accurate picture of what is happening in Wales other than we have indications that the problem exists and it tends to be hidden.
  (Ms Dix) Local authorities accept about five per cent of older people as homeless. That is likely to be an under-estimate. The particular problem in rural areas is tied tenancies which are coming to an end and those workers might not find themselves accepted by the local authority as homeless because they are considered to be quite capable of finding their own accommodation. Defining what is old is very vague, there is no criterion on it, it varies from local authority to local authority.

  523. Thank you.
  (Mr Moran) There is a strange definition of homelessness and it is residential care. Many of the residential care homes are dreadful. For an old person to be shunted willy nilly from his or her own home because that home is no longer suitable to live in for various reasons and to go into a residential home means you have lost your own home and, therefore, you are homeless. I had occasion to visit an elderly lady who was living in a local authority run residential home and she had been there for three months. When I walked in she recognised me and she talked to me. Staff were amazed. She had been there for three months and had not said one word to anyone and the staff thought she had lost the power of speech. She had not, she was just so shocked about being taken away from her own home and put into residential care. Really all that was needed was a grant for a stair lift in her own home. A stair lift would have allowed her to go up to her bedroom and up to the toilet but it was not forthcoming, so she was shunted away. That is homelessness as well.
  (Ms Palazo«n) That is why the campaign asks for a wider definition of what constitutes homelessness, because a house is not necessarily a home, as Tom has explained.

  524. We have been told a lot about the connection between social exclusion and health in later life. It has been suggested that people in Wales might be living longer but they are not necessarily living better in terms of quality of life in later years. Does your experience support this? Do you see healthy living centres and local health groups as making a difference?
  (Ms Dix) We are quite excited about the concept of healthy living centres. The health of the older population in Wales is actually very poor compared to the rest of the UK and Western European countries. We have got a situation now where people are having 40 years of life after retirement, so it is essential that we try to maintain them to be as fit and active as possible. The state of health presently is not good. Prescriptions are 13 per cent per head in Wales, that is more than any other place in the UK, and 48 per cent of those prescriptions each year are for people over 60. We are trying to get Age Concern groups to put together bids in conjunction with other people for healthy living centres. It has been proven that improving exercise among older people can have tremendous health significance in improving the chances of having a healthy old age.
  (Ms Palazo«n) Although people in Wales are living longer, the highest mortality rate in the UK tends to be in Wales. They are living longer but not in comparison to their English, Scottish and Irish counterparts. Health will be related to housing and related to isolation. Whilst the concept of a healthy living centre, which we understand is not a building, it is a concept, is something that we feel is commendable it is important not to forget that the conditions that people live in in their homes are going to have an important influence on health. Housing and health are related.
  (Mr Moran) Our health is dreadfully important to us, even more than to you young folk. We have very few days left to be healthy in. I have had recent experience of the National Health Service personally and I am certainly not one of those who are going to condemn the National Health Service, no way. They looked after me wonderfully, wonderfully well. But, and it is a big but, and this appertains throughout rural Wales, I live in Monmouth and I was taken into hospital in Newport. My wife does not drive. The transport system in Monmouth and Newport is hopeless. I instructed my wife—she does not like taking instructions from me—not to even dream of coming to see me in hospital because she has terrible arthritis and to sit for hours and hours on a rickety old bus was not going to help her. Luckily I was in hospital for a comparatively short time, so I could wait, but if I had been there for a long time, the lack of opportunity for family visiting would have been very serious. That is not the fault of the health service, it is the fault of the public transport system. In my own experience the health service is wonderful and we ought to be terribly proud of it, it is still the best in the world. There are things wrong with it, of course there are, you see examples quoted in the press continually of things that go wrong but you do not see examples of the thousands and thousands and thousands of things that go right. I am one of them, I went right, and I am very grateful.

  525. One last specific question. Do any of your organisations have views on the issue of financial exclusion, bank closures, poor people getting bank accounts of any sort?
  (Ms Dix) We are quite worried about the changes to payment of benefits.

  526. That was my next question.
  (Ms Dix) It is predicted that it is going to close down about half of the post offices in Wales and that will have a tremendous impact in rural areas. The post office is really the centre of these rural communities and it is a shop as well as a post office. We are very worried about it. We have had an awful lot of phone calls from pensioners who are concerned and worried about the fact that payments are going to be paid monthly from weekly and they do not want that to change, they like to have it on a weekly basis.
  (Ms Palazo«n) In many areas the post offices have already disappeared and if the banks close as well and there is no transport then it is a fairly serious situation for many people in the more remote areas.
  (Mr Moran) In my own case, Chairman, I am one of the lucky ones, I have some superannuation from local government service. That superannuation goes directly into my building society account. I do not have a bank account, I have a building society account. The superannuation payment goes straight into that and out of that on direct debit go the gas bill, the electricity bill and things like that. My wife collects our pensions, both hers and mine, through the pension book every Monday morning from the post office. She collects all the cash and she uses that cash for the normal weekly purchases and she gives me my spending money out of that. It is not a lot but it is there. That system of being able to draw cash on a pension book is very, very important, tremendously important, and should not be changed.

  527. Ms Dix made the point that she is very concerned about benefits, I take it you are following the same line as Mr Moran. Could you explain to us what your concerns are about the new system? What do you understand it to be?
  (Ms Dix) Apart from the fact that it means post offices being closed it is also having the payment a week in arrears, three weeks in advance when people are used to having weekly payments and they find that more easy to budget with.

  528. Mr Moran mentioned about payments in cash at the post office, what is your understanding of this aspect of the change?
  (Ms Dix) I am talking about payments going straight into a bank account and payments going to be made monthly rather than weekly.

  529. Can I ask Help the Aged what is your understanding of the position?
  (Ms Palazo«n) Much the same.

  530. You are wrong. I think it is important to make this point because it has been hyped up in the press that people will no longer be able to have cash payments at the post office. This question has been asked time and time again in the House of Commons and answered by the Minister and the Secretary of State. People will still have the choice to have their payments in cash if they so wish. I think it is important for that point to be made.
  (Ms Dix) But if the post offices close they will not have that option.

  531. Are you actually saying that you would like to refuse pensioners or other benefit claimants the right to have their payments paid into their bank accounts if they so choose in order to subsidise post offices?
  (Ms Dix) No. The danger is that half the post offices, as predicted, will close in Wales as a result of this. We are worried about the impact on rural areas.

  532. This does not seem to be the way to save post offices, does it, to force people to get their benefits from post offices if they do not choose to do so? Perhaps there are other answers that we need to address to the problem to ensure that people will still get their benefits.
  (Ms Palazo«n) Whatever the method is is irrelevant, at the end of the day it is about being able to have a weekly payment and the choice of having cash if that is what you have been budgeting for.

  Mr Caton: That is assured.

  533. You have been misled somewhere along the line if you thought that people would not have that choice. It is important for us to make clear this point.
  (Ms Palazo«n) Will that choice exist if there is no post office in the area?

  534. You are going to the next step now. The general thinking is that people will no longer be able to have a cash benefit at the post office and that is wrong. Whoever started sending that message out is quite, quite wrong.
  (Ms Palazo«n) I think perhaps the confusion lies in the fact that so many rural areas post offices have disappeared.

  Mr Caton: Yes, there has been a process of post offices closing over many years, you are quite right.

  535. I think we are getting off the point a little here. As politicians we are concerned with your views on this issue and obviously you are concerned that there is a possibility that whatever happens there is going to be less choice because, for whatever reason, post offices are closing. They may close more if people choose to take their pensions through the bank, that is their choice at the moment. I think we have clarified the fact that you are not saying that there should be no choice.
  (Ms Dix) No.
  (Ms Palazo«n) No, we are not.

  536. I think you were sitting in before when I asked the question that I have been asking every witness we have had for some time now. Because we are over-running again, but it is an important issue, briefly can you try to give me three of the most important factors that contribute to social exclusion and how you think they can be addressed?
  (Ms Dix) I have got four. Very quickly, the first is a minimal transport system. Obviously the transport system needs to be urgently addressed in Wales, lack of transport which prevents social contacts vital for older people. Poor quality housing because that affects the health of people. There is a need for a range of good quality accommodation, affordable accommodation, available to meet older people's differing needs. Poor health obviously affects people. More work needs to be done developing health promotion initiatives for older people, which there are not that many of at the moment, and to ensure that there is equal access to health care for older people. Lack of income we discussed at great length. We support an increase in the state pension.
  (Ms Palazo«n) In my opinion I feel that there are no three most important aspects because they are all equally important and inter-related. Whilst an older person can have the best of health, best of income and best of housing, if there is no transport that person will be socially excluded. All of those elements play an equal part and there is an interaction. One further point would be to add that age discrimination is not legislated against in Britain. It is an oddity that we legislate against sex discrimination and against race discrimination but not age discrimination and perhaps that would help solve some of these issues.
  (Mr Moran) In my opinion, Chairman, there are two main things that we have to sort out. One is the lack of a proper basic state pension and the second is the lack of public transport. They are the two things which affect pensioners more than anything else.

  Chairman: Thank you. With four and two it is an average of three.

  Mrs Williams: There was consensus.

  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for being very patient in answering our questions this afternoon. It is very nice to be referred to as "young", Mr Moran, thank you for that as well.