The Children’s Commissioner is a statutory position created by the Children Act 2004. The Commissioner’s remit is to promote and protect children’s rights in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In the Commissioner’s role, she has met and heard from parents of children with serious, and sometimes life limiting health conditions. Some of these parents have experienced high levels of often preventable stress and hardship because of inflexible working conditions, which has meant they have either left their jobs to care for their children or they are struggling to hold down work. Precarity in their parent’s employment has a significant effect on children whose wellbeing is intimately connected with their families.
In her recent report, ‘Children waiting to leave hospital’ about children experiencing delayed discharge and prolonged hospital stays, the Children’s Commissioner found that within one generation of children born in or after 2007, 260,141 children spent over three weeks in hospital. Over a thousand (1,342) children spent over a year in hospital over their childhoods. Long hospital stays disproportionately affect children living in more deprived areas, and children from ethnic minority backgrounds. In conversations with parents and professionals, they detailed the financial consequences, including poverty, of long and recurrent hospital stays endured by seriously ill children.[i]
This consultation seeks answers on how the proposed changes to carer’s leave and a new form of leave for parents of seriously ill children will impact employees with caring responsibilities and their employers. The office’s response sets out the positive impact the proposals will have specifically on parents with caring responsibilities for a child who is seriously ill and / or disabled. However, these proposals will also have a significant impact on individuals who need care from their loved ones – and notably for this office’s response – children growing up with disabilities and health conditions. These children may experience difficulty and pain because of their disability or health condition, be admitted to hospital, have time out of school and away from friends. And while children’s complex needs can unavoidably alter aspects of their childhood, it should never change the fundamentals of quality of life: Children should not miss out on is the love and care of their parents who are facing decisions between earning a living and caring for their child with complex needs; they should not face poverty and precarity as a result of inflexible working conditions; and they should not ever be made to feel like the financial challenges their families face are because of their parents’ caring responsibilities. Although this group is not considered within the consultation’s questions, how children will be affected by any changes made by the Department should be a key factor.
The steps being proposed by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade are welcome. Focusing on how carers can be better supported to stay in employment, providing stability for their families, is something the Children’s Commissioner called for in the report. It is a step forward in better supporting families, and children growing up with disabilities and health conditions that mean they need additional care. Looking ahead, more must be done across government, in particular in the NHS and children’s social care, to provide children with complex needs with more support, and a better quality of life.
[i] Children’s Commissioner’s office, Children waiting to leave hospital, Link
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