12
Examination of witnesses
Clive Gilbert, Kevin Heaney, Dr Kate Hamblin and Guy Harris.
Q106 The Chair: Good morning, everybody. It is very nice to see the Adult Social Care Committee in session again this morning. We have a few apologies for absence—Lord Bradley, Baroness Campbell, Baroness Fraser and our special adviser Jon Glasby—but the rest of us are here. I am very happy to have our witnesses with us. You are extremely expert, and we will be talking and listening to you for the next couple of hours. We are very grateful indeed to you for your time and expertise.
We have Guy Harris from AccessiblePRS, Dr Kate Hamblin from the University of Sheffield, and Clive Gilbert from Policy Connect, who will be with us for the first part of our meeting when we will be talking about accessible housing and digital technology. For the second part of our meeting we have Jamie Gault from Action for Carers, Surrey, and Chris McCann from Healthwatch.
We are covering a very important range of issues this morning. We have been hearing week in, week out from people who are in receipt of care and people who are looking after them, but are unpaid, because, as you know, that is the focus of our inquiry. We are exploring the extent of invisibility in adult social care, particularly as it bears down on unpaid carers, because they are at the sharp end of so much that goes wrong. It is so important that we shine a light on to their conditions and their challenges.
This morning we have experts who know about three of the challenges, and possibilities too. There is the essential nature of housing and adaptable housing—housing that enables people to have, in their own home, all they need to be able to live a full, long and safe life. We know that there is not enough of this, and we will be exploring the reasons why and the implications of that. Then we will look at where we are with the range of technologies that can help people with severe disabilities and people who are growing older, and the people who look after them. That is obviously a very fertile field, and we are looking forward very much to hearing from Clive Gilbert and Dr Hamblin about that.
In the second part of the meeting we will get on to one of the thorny questions: why is the adult social care system so hard to navigate? Why do we make it so difficult for people to access the very basic things that they need, let alone enable them, as the people at the heart of the system, to say and get what they want as appropriate, so that they are able to co-design and co-produce the facilities and the lives that they want to lead autonomously themselves?
That is what this morning is about. I will kick off with a very basic question about housing to Guy Harris, who is expert in this field. Guy, you have already been in contact with us and told us a lot about the existing narrative that surrounds individuals with housing and care needs. Our concern is how the present negative narrative of adult social care is reflected in what is available for housing. How does it impact on the housing sector? Can you give us a sense of the scale of the accessible housing crisis today and whether there is any agreed sense of priorities among people like you who are working with developers and housing specialists to determine what we could do that would ease the present crisis as well as plan properly for the future crisis? I am sorry, they are big questions, but I am sure you are capable of dealing with them.
Guy Harris: Good morning, and thank you. Let us start with the narrative. I think the narrative to date has reinforced a lot of negative stereotypes—that we see disabled people as being needy or in need of handouts. I am a wheelchair user, and there is no understanding of the more social model—that our built environments are the disabling factor. If we start from the perspective of the London School of Economics figure of 1.8 million English households containing someone with a disability, in my business I am concerned with wheelchair users, and there are an estimated more than 400,000 wheelchair users who do not have suitable housing.
In my work I am very much a dot joiner or problem solver, and the question is: what do I need to do to change or to catalyse change in the industry? I think we need to understand that the need for accessible housing is an issue that is not going away. It is increasing, so in commerce and the property sector it is an opportunity. For that opportunity to be taken up, we need to level the playing field. We cannot have two sets of housebuilders competing for a single plot of land, and one deciding to squeeze in micro-housing and the other doing good-quality suitable housing. I think there is a need at policy level to heed advice that is repeatedly given, which is about mandating minimum planning standards and including wheelchair accessibility in them.
The narrative that accessibility and disability are a very foreign concept that has no relevance in our lives is strange, when it touches most of our lives. When I am chatting with other professionals about accessibility,, I quite regularly see the eureka moment, when the person I am chatting with manages to make the connection. Maybe a parent is getting older and their care needs are changing. Maybe there is dementia, or a disabled niece or nephew. There will be someone close to them who has a disability, and they recognise it. It is about making that connection between their personal lives and their day jobs, what they do in work. Somehow when we come to work I think we switch into a different mode and often do not see the opportunities for creating links and commercial opportunities that include more people.
I think the narrative is very much about just normalising and familiarising and not being afraid to get it wrong. I have learned a lot from the Black Lives Matter movement, Pride and the gender movement, and I feel that somehow with disability we are still quite scared of it, which is a shame.
The Chair: That is very interesting. Your expertise is particularly rental housing, is it not?
Guy Harris: That is right.
Q107 The Chair: We have a massive issue with market housing, volume housing, and the failure to prepare for adaptability and flexibility in housing. Where do you see the role of the developers versus the Government in this? Do the developers understand more about what you are saying than government?
Guy Harris: That is a good question. How to phrase this? I am not sure that anyone from government or developers is particularly hearing or acting on what I am saying. One issue we have is that we are hugely busy in our day jobs, and a developer that has bought land is doing what they know best to ensure profit. Getting developers on side has to happen at policy level, and that is a Government issue.
The Chair: Do you have any hard and firm figures about the extra costs that would fall on developers if every house was required—
Guy Harris: That is a great question. I have just failed to get a funding grant to do that piece of research, which I think is really important. The complexity of the problem is that if we stick to just housing developers or big housing developers, we are saying, “If you’re disabled, you must live in that place there”, rather than saying, “You’re disabled. You already have a support network and a life and work, kids' schooling maybe, and all these things in place. Where do you want to live?” That means addressing all our tenures, all our housing types. That piece of research, which is critical and which I would love to do with someone, is important for new build, retrofit and complete refurbishment. It is important in urban set-ups, rural set-ups, suburban set-ups, for all types of property, and we need to understand those different permutations.
Coming back to your original question, that is important, because all this is quite chicken and egg. All my work is quite chicken and egg. Take local authorities’ lack of accessible housing for social rents, for example. They want to go to the private rented sector and say, “Can you solve our problem?” That is impossible because of our existing housing stock and the fact that new builds are not building it, so there is an additional cost at the moment. Local authorities would do well to understand that there is an additional cost and should say, “If you can supply us with suitable, not workable, housing for wheelchair users in the private rented sector, there is a local housing allowance rate plus an additional amount”. That needs quantifying. Then I think we start to change the conversation.
My experience is that most people want to do something about this problem—we are all human—but the sector, the market, the policy and all these different areas are completely stacked against anyone putting their own money on the table and saying, “Here I am. Yes, we can do this”. So far, I have found only one company that is embracing it and going, “Yes, we can do this”.
The Chair: That is pretty horrific to listen to. I will pass now to my very expert colleague Lady Warwick to continue this part of the conversation.
Q108 Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Good morning, Guy. A lot of what you said resonated with me. I am the chair of the National Housing Federation, and housing associations, as you will be aware, provide three-quarters of all supported and sheltered housing. Every time I visit any form of sheltered accommodation, although there is terrific optimism about the work they do, there is also real concern about the limits on what they can do and about the possibility of developing more and access to the resources to enable them to develop, so a lot of the frustrations that you have expressed resonated with me.
We, as a committee, have talked about the normalisation of accessible housing—in a way, you talked about that when you were talking about levelling the playing field, equalisation and so on—to ensure that we can increase the supply, because it is acknowledged as a real need. We have talked about the limits of government, but how can the Government best support it? Is there one thing, or more than one thing, that you think the Government might do specifically to increase the supply?
I suppose you have already given us some of this, but how does this compare with what is happening on the ground, with the timescales and the promises that are made and the limits on what is delivered? Finally, if it is possible, which agency or organisation should have the responsibility for ensuring an adequate supply of accessible housing?
Guy Harris: Thank you. I will start with responsibility, because that is a very easy question to answer. We all live in this society together; it is everyone’s community. I talk about chicken and egg, and it is the responsibility of all of us. If only the Government would do their bit, if only agents would do their bit—they are; I am working with them—if only developers, marketeers, buyers and renters would do their bit. The problem has been so huge and so complex that everyone has said, “It’s not what we do. It’s a niche subject. It’s someone else’s responsibility”, rather than going to these organisations and saying, “There’s a solutions-led process”. I think people are ready to accept it.
You talk about normalising. Every time we have this conversation, and every time this conversation appears at the forefront of media on front pages and in property articles, it is doing the work of normalising. If we create an environment where accessibility is part of it, is standard, is mandated, this would normalise it.
You have talked about supply. There are three issues that I have taken from my own work. Supply is the critical one; it is my first objective. The second is process. At the moment, it is a very frustrating and lengthy task to find accessible housing, whether it is to purchase, to rent privately or to rent socially. I have launched a scheme, and I am working with estate agents and property portals and the CRM platforms that sit between. My experience is that when you go to these organisations with a solution, they are all staffed by humans and they are embracing it and saying, “This is absolutely fantastic”. With a bit of training and understanding the issues, what experiences disabled renters face, and how we quite simply solve those issues, you normalise the process. They are intelligent people, they get it and they can work with it. My third objective, which we have mentioned earlier, is about narrative.
Your critical question is about supply and timescales. Nothing will change until the Government mandates minimum accessible housing standards. This is very frustrating, because I am not saying anything new; in previous consultations the Government have been told this explicitly and categorically by a wide range of very knowledgeable and experienced professionals. It does not make sense to me that it is not already happening, because the fallout and the cost of inadequate housing to the Treasury is huge and we are preventing people from living productive and creative lives and adding to tax receipts.
I can talk for hours on this subject, and you have lots of other expert witnesses. On timescales and supply, level the playing field; it is as simple as that. M4(2) needs to be a basic minimum standard for new build except in a few cases. I understand the sustainability and lifestyle choice for tiny homes or microhomes, but that really should not be foisted on anyone unless it is a choice. As soon as we mandate minimum standards, that will impact the timescales.
The Chair: Thank you very much. It was an excellent answer, and we absolutely take the point about mandatory standards and the regulation of this sector in that way. Thank you for being so clear about that.
Q109 Baroness Shephard of Northwold: Good morning. I cannot see you at the moment, Guy. I was most interested in your eloquence and enthusiasm about mandating. I have one question to start with to clear my own mind. About 15 years ago, did new builds not have to have ramps or wheelchair-friendly access? Can you answer that as a matter of fact?
Guy Harris: I think the regulations changed in 2015, but the regulations were optional and the Government devolved responsibility on to under-resourced local authorities to implement them or to mandate them if they wanted to. It strikes me as a slightly cynical move, because local authorities do not really have the means to challenge some quite deep-pocketed developers and housebuilders. London has taken the lead and implemented it, and it has been really interesting seeing that.
There is still a long way to go, and we see legacy developments coming through where they have tried to fudge the accessibility. I was shown a block in a scheme and it was about 15 storeys high. They had stacked the accessible apartments, which clearly made sense to an architect. When you think about Grenfell, the idea of having 15 occupants, all with greater care needs and restricted mobility, stacked above each other in a tower does not make sense, so we need to look at how we are doing it. Another obvious failing is where designs are based on the adaptable version and then they try to fudge the accessible version rather than starting with the accessible designs and then scaling that to the adaptable version. How we implement these things is important.
I cannot answer your original question about the situation 10 or 14 years ago. It is probably not wise to name names, but I look at some rather prestigious developments based on neoclassical designs, just on the basis of looks, and see a lot of homes going in with steps at the front door.
The Chair: If I may interrupt, I can answer your question, Lady Shephard, because 15 years ago when I was the Minister for Housing in the Lords we introduced a policy document, the first ever, called Lifetime Homes, Lifetime Neighbourhoods. It laid out the pathway from our voluntary standards, which we absolutely promoted, to a timetable that would have made them mandatory within a matter of years. That is on the record, and it was a great disappointment that that mandatory decision was not taken in due course.
Q110 Baroness Shephard of Northwold: I asked, because it seemed to me that a start had been made some 15 years ago on making wheelchair access mandatory. Guy absolutely answered the question when he said that in fact it became optional, or was optional, which is partly to do with local authorities’ powers and sheer ability to stretch; their housing inspectors seem to have vanished as a species.
None of this was my proper question. The Government, as you will know, have launched a consultation on accessible housing, and in their people at the heart of care White Paper they have pledged housing-related investments. Do these commitments go far enough to resolve the accessible housing crisis and, if so, to what extent? I think you have already told us that in no way has it been resolved far enough. I think you also told us what needs to be done to make this a reality.
I have another question to ask on behalf of the Bishop of Carlisle, who at the moment is without electricity. Could you say more, in case you have left anything out, about what needs to be done to make accessible housing much more of a reality? Do you want to put in terms of time or whatever? How would you start? You said that it should be mandatory. What is the first thing you would do?
Guy Harris: The mandatory issue as a start is really important. There is also the need for enforcement. We need it at both ends of a development. There is also a lack of knowledge. Anecdotally, I have heard about a lack of knowledge in Building Control and certain designs I have seen that have passed standards, but do not meet the standards. There is an issue with the process.
I think we can also do a lot of work to enable private organisations that are passionately committed and experienced and doing some very great work to keep doing that work and to show that it can be commercially viable. I know that you have spoken with Lisa Brown, who has talked about the frustration and the difficulty financing or mortgaging properties. As soon as the words “care”, “vulnerable”, or any other words are used, they go into a flat spin. None of that makes sense, because when you get to know and understand the sector, you know that it is a deeply reliable and long-term sector and that the people who need housing are very stable. I would also look at the finance sector and say, “Come on, we can make great changes here”.
Q111 Baroness Shephard of Northwold: That is so helpful, and very convincing. Thank you so much. This is a supplementary question that the Bishop of Carlisle would have asked if he was not cut off by an electricity failure. What role can the disabled facilities grant play in the future to improve access to accessible and adaptable housing?
Guy Harris: This is another important area, and it is important to say that when I reply I am coming at this from the perspective of trying to solve wheelchair accessible housing. For me, the disabled facilities grant is wonderful for people in their homes. I say “wonderful”, but it is quite a postcode lottery. It is fraught, but as a concept it is good. If you need to move with work or with family, for whatever reason, if you have an acquired disability, existing housing does not suit and you want to be in the private rented sector, the disabled facilities grant does not help at all, because you cannot move in to an unadapted property.
There is a lot that we can look at in the process. I know that landlords would be quite happy to have adaptations made to their housing and for that to be funded by the disabled facilities grant and to house a wheelchair user, say, on a longer-term lease or agreement, but there is a delay. How do you manage that process, and who will pay the rent in the meantime while works are carried out and everything is agreed? The market is very fast moving, particularly at the moment, and the process is not equipped to deal with that.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold: Thank you so much for all your answers. What you are telling us is startling if we have not been involved in this field, and I am convinced by what you have had to tell us.
The Chair: Guy, I know that you have to leave us now, and I suspect that we have scraped the surface of your knowledge this morning, but what you have told us has been extremely important. If we may, we will follow up on some of the important questions that we have started to ask, so that we can get more help from you on the specific aspects of what you may see as an emerging set of priorities that we should be advocating for. With that, thank you very much indeed for your time.
Guy Harris: Thank you very much for listening to me, and yes, please do get in touch whenever.
The Chair: Thank you. You have been a terrific witness. We now move to questions to Kate Hamblin and Clive Gilbert about the role of digital technologies and how they can help in all manner of ways to achieve different forms of autonomy.
Q112 Baroness Goudie: Good morning, Dr Hamblin. This issue is very close to me, and I feel that it could make a big difference if it could be followed through to make it happen. What role can digital technologies play in enabling accessible housing beyond the traditional technologies such as telecare? How well understood is this role among local government, technology providers and people with care needs? It has to be said that it should not be ageist, because people of all ages can manage this, but others cannot.
Dr Kate Hamblin: Thank you for your question and for having me. To start with, it is important to recognise that traditional telecare technologies emerged 60-odd years ago in supported housing and focused very much on managing risk associated with people living alone generally or discharged from hospital.
Technology has moved on significantly in that period, and perhaps the thinking on technology in care and housing is still slightly risk averse and focused on managing that risk. Now that local authorities have a duty on well-being, perhaps there is an opportunity now to reconsider what role technologies can play in accessible housing in supporting people with care needs. There is now a key driver for change, a key opportunity for change, aside from the advances in technology. We also have the analogue-to-digital switchover. A lot of the traditional telecare such as pendant alarms and environmental sensors use analogue phone lines, which are being decommissioned, and as a result those devices will not be reliable, so they need to be rethought and reconsidered.
There is an opportunity now for local authorities, service providers and housing providers using traditional telecare to think about what they do next. There are digital equivalents. You can almost have a digital pendant alarm versus an analogue pendant alarm, but there are questions about the battery life back-up and things like that, so they are not quite as equivalent as perhaps they could be with some of the standards. So there is an opportunity now to think more broadly about how we can use technology in ways that support well-being and independence as well as manage risk, because that is obviously very important.
In our work at the University of Sheffield we have looked at what local authorities are doing. This touches on their awareness of the potential of digital. We have seen examples of them looking to widen the range of technologies they are using in care arrangements. There is an enthusiasm for pilots particularly of mainstream smart devices and considering how they can be used in caring arrangements and contexts. We have spoken to people who use technology to support them to live well at home, and we have heard some creative examples of people combining expensive specialist equipment with mainstream devices to try to live the life they want to live.
The key is personalisation—giving people the ability to make those creative decisions, or to be facilitated to make those creative decisions where that is more challenging for them. There are variations in the ability of people to understand and navigate quite a complex market of technology. Unfortunately, the traditional local authority approaches to technology are not really aligned with this personalisation approach. It is the more traditional bulk buy, block contracts, a lot of pendant alarms, rather than finding out what the person would like to achieve and then trying to create a bespoke package of technology to do that.
We have seen pilots and interesting pieces of work happening on mainstream devices, and newer digital technologies that can do more than alert when someone has had an incident and can use data to try to predict when an incident is likely to happen, but we are also seeing the other end of the spectrum, with local authorities saying that the analogue-to-digital switchover is too big an issue for them to tackle on their own and they are waiting for government guidance, funding or the perfect piece of equipment to be launched to help them meet this challenge. Some local authorities will think that the proposed £150 million in the White Paper could help them navigate across to digital. It is not immediately clear to me whether that is the intention of that allocated money.
From the local government perspective, understanding of the potential of digital is mixed. From a technology provider perspective, we have engaged with technology providers in our work, and I think there is an understanding that there is a market in social care, and we are seeing more mainstream digital technology providers dipping their toes into that market and starting to market things more around facilitating care.
I am less clear how much engagement there is with the end users in the design process. Even with specialist care technologies, manufacturers we speak to seem to focus on what we call the choosers—the local authorities or unpaid carers—who might be selecting or suggesting technology versus the people who will actually be the end users.
When there is that mismatch, you end up with technology that is not necessarily what someone who will be using it would ultimately like in the functionality, the useability and particularly the design. The design of specialist equipment is never really something that the person would necessarily select. We have spoken to manufacturers about this who say that they have tried to offer the ability to personalise devices, but the local authorities want everything in beige. There is that disconnect in understanding.
Finally, on people with care needs and their understanding, we have seen people being incredibly creative and imaginative in how they blend all different types of technologies to support themselves, but we are acutely aware, and they themselves highlight, that they are in a privileged position to do that. They have the knowledge and the assets to do it. This is not for everyone. We know that data indicates that ageing, disability and socioeconomic status are all differentials in accessing technologies and connectivity. There are digital divides already, and as more digital technologies are being pulled into care arrangements, digital divides are being pulled in there as well. That is something to be really mindful of.
Baroness Goudie: Thank you, Kate. It gives us much thought and further questioning.
The Chair: Thank you so much. We now move to Clive Gilbert.
Q113 Baroness Jolly: Clive, can you explain for us how digital technologies can be taken one step further to respond to individuals’ real needs and desires, particularly in the context of housing? What is the role of co-production in doing so?
Clive Gilbert: You are right to point to the importance of housing. When the disabled people’s independent living movement first listed the conditions that need to be in place in order for disabled people to choose how and where they live, suitable housing was at the top. Digital technology plays an important part in everybody’s domestic lives in the 21st century, and there is no reason why this should not be the case for people who require care and support. However, as has already been raised in this inquiry, the existing narrative on care does not match the level of ambition that disabled and older people have for their own lives.
That is why we need to learn from the disabled people’s independent living movement and always think of enabling independent living and providing care as two sides of the same coin, just as social care should be about helping people live their best lives and not just about keeping people safe and well. We need to be more ambitious about the role technology can have in supporting people’s needs and desires. Many older and disabled people are already using technology to do everything from connecting with friends to managing a team at work to booking theatre tickets. That is true for most people today, and disabled people are no different. We may use a different tech set-up, but the things we do with tech are not radically different.
That is why making access to technology a core goal of care and the independent living services will contribute to a more aspirational care system, but the current approach to technology embodies a medical model of care, what I sometimes call “doing technology to people”. Technology in care is almost synonymous with the digital transformation of care delivery rather than putting tools in the hands of disabled people themselves. Innovations such as key cards for carers to enter accommodation and sensors to prevent falls are hugely important, but we are locked into a paradigm where we assume that the people doing the care will be professionals rather than those receiving care. The dominant focus on prevention in particular runs counter to how most people think of the role of tech in their lives.
Digital can also empower, entertain and connect us. We have to start by shifting the conversation, challenging every initiative and policy on tech and care to start with the clients and what they can do with technology. Our latest report, for example, recommends that the adult social care outcomes framework includes measures on digital inclusion and that the people who receive care are enabled to do basic things like shop online if they want to.
Some progress has already been made. For example, the Government’s new delivery guidance on the disabled facilities grant has a chapter on how assisted technology can complement structural adaptations to people’s housing to help them live more independently, as recommended in our latest report. There are many more opportunities for government to make sure that local services respond to individuals’ needs and desires. We also recommend that local authorities should ensure that adult social care services contracts have an independent living chapter setting out how independent living, including through technology, will be supported.
Your question also rightly raised the issue of co-production. As we know, co-producing services with disabled and older people produces outcomes that better align with users’ needs and preferences. This is true in the case of technology and care, but we also know that co-production does not just happen. It requires an infrastructure. People need to have easy ways of getting involved in decision-making bodies and be supported to take part.
To do this, local authorities need staff with people skills to work with members of the public and to develop practical ways for them to be included in decision-making. Last year, Hammersmith and Fulham Council published a disabled people’s housing strategy co-produced with disabled residents. The council has set up a disabled people’s commission to help shape policy. Our report recommended that the Care Quality Commission develops guidance on co-production and incorporates it into the lines of inquiry used to guide inspections of local authority adult social care services. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you so much. What a splendid reply, and I am sure Baroness Jolly agrees with me.
Baroness Jolly: Yes, it was absolutely spot on.
The Chair: Thank you very much indeed, Clive.
Q114 Lord Laming: Clive, just following on from your very helpful response to Baroness Jolly, what thoughts do you have about how we can enable users of services to have the benefit of care technologies that are designed to meet their personal needs and aspirations?
Clive Gilbert: That requires better training for technology developers in order to include users in the product development cycle and properly understand disabled needs. There is a myth in the tech sector that disabled people have completely different needs to everyone else, which is not true. We need to change awareness among tech professionals, and we need better funding to help new entrants in the market gain a foothold. With the way commissioning systems work at the moment, it is hard for new products and new innovators to reach the market. We have recommended that the Government put more investment into research and development.
Lord Laming: That is very helpful. Thank you very much indeed.
The Chair: Thank you, Clive. You have such intimate knowledge of this and it is really important to hear all this.
Q115 Baroness Barker: Thank you very much, Dr Hamblin and Clive. I seem to recall that 10 or 15 years ago there was a great burst of enthusiasm that technology would be the answer to care. Picking up on what Dr Hamblin said about tech providers and their engagement with the care market, Microsoft and Google, just about the time they all brought out their specs, were going to be revolutionising community care.
In hindsight, are there some limits to tech as an answer to care and to independent living? Should we take those limitations into consideration when we are trying to come up with policy?
Dr Kate Hamblin: There are limits, and digital technology is a very broad category. Our research has highlighted the importance of context and the way people use it in mediating outcomes. The idea that there could be a single silver bullet is problematic. The presentation in policy of technology first has sometimes led to commissioning that is perhaps overly tech-focused—“This is an interesting piece of kit. What can we use it for?”—rather than, “What are the outcomes a person might want to achieve, and how can we use a variety of different services, including technology, to help them get there?” I think that is part of the problem.
We have also seen a recent focus on the kit to the exclusion of the service wraparound, and the idea that if we get some kit we can save some staff resource elsewhere. People will need a lot of ongoing support to use technology. There is installation, ongoing support, reassessment, troubleshooting. It is not the silver bullet that it is sometimes presented as. Certainly, with newer technologies, the use of mainstream technologies in care also brings challenges in consent, data processing and ownership insecurity, and we perhaps do not have a handle in the social care sector on how we will manage those questions.
The other limit is that sometimes there is too much focus on creating independence. Independence is very important, but technology could also be very helpful in terms of interdependence and connections. We saw that during the pandemic, and I think people also value that as part of a good life. With technologies that focus very much on trying to reduce the person’s need to engage with other people, particularly the care workforce, there are bigger questions about what it can do to connect people and to keep people engaged and well that way.
The Chair: Thank you so much. I thank our three witnesses in the first session this morning for extraordinarily powerful evidence, particularly, if I may, Clive and Kevin for showing us so graphically what technology can be used for in ordinary ways for extraordinary people. We have learned a huge amount from each of you and we are very grateful indeed. These are very positive avenues for us to explore. If we may, we will come back to you for yet more expert evidence as we go forward. Thank you very much indeed.
