What Carers Trust does

CARERS TRUST US TO MAKE A CHANGE

Carers Trust is a major charity for, with and about carers. We work to improve support, services and recognition for anyone living with the challenges of caring, unpaid, for a family member or friend who is ill, frail, disabled or has mental health or addiction problems.

We do this with a UK-wide network of quality assured independent partners and through the provision of grants to help carers get the extra help they need to live their own lives. With these locally based Network Partners we are able to support carers in their homes through the provision of replacement care, and in the community with information, advice, emotional support, hands on practical help and access to much needed breaks. We offer specialist services for carers of people of all ages and conditions and a range of individually tailored support and group activities.

Our vision is that unpaid carers count and can access the help they need to live their lives.

CARERS TRUST US TO SPEAK OUT

Carers and Network Partners tell us that we need to ensure carers’ voices are heard at a national level and that we use this to influence and seek change on behalf of carers.

This year we have focused on campaigning on carers’ key issues, listening to carers and Network Partners and ensuring we are able to achieve real change for carers. We are also developing new approaches to carer support that will be tested and replicated across our network, shaping our policy and public affairs work.

Young carers on the agenda

In the last 12 months we have been instrumental in helping young carers get heard in parliaments across the UK. We are providing secretariat support to the All-party Parliamentary Group for Young Carers and Young Adult Carers. This new platform will encourage improved support, services and recognition for young and young adult carers.

Young carers in Scotland and Wales also have a strong voice in the Scottish and
Welsh Youth Parliaments. Two youth parliament members are supported by Carers Trust Scotland and Carers Trust Wales respectively.

Shaping policy and services

Following our work with Network Partners and carers, Carers Trust Wales gave evidence to the Welsh Parliament on how things should be improved for carers and carer services. As a result, the Welsh Government committed to delivering a Strategic Action Plan for Carers by spring 2021. Carers Trust Wales also led on the development of a national Engagement Group to inform and shape Welsh Government policy that impacts carers.

In Scotland, as a member of the Young Carer Grant Working Group, we have helped shape all aspects of the new Young Carer Grant which was launched by the Scottish Government in autumn 2019.

Giving carers the tools to campaign

To date, over 250 young and young adult carers have been involved in local projects campaigning around their own mental health with our My Mental Health programme.

When our Raising the Voice of Carers project ended in July 2019, we had helped nearly 1,000 carers in England to get involved in campaigning, exceeding our target of 500.

Thanks to Comic Relief, we put carers in touch with decision makers, held workshops and helped local services raise key issues.

Our tools also made it easy for carers to get in touch with their local candidates in the run up to the general election and to ask them to pledge their support for carers.

New guides for professionals

2019 saw us publish three new guides for mental health professionals working with adults, children and young people. Developed in Scotland with support from health and social care partnerships and the Scottish Government, and in England with support from NHS England, they build on the success of our Triangle of Care model. This encourages service users, carers and health professionals to work together to improve service user treatment and wellbeing.

In Wales, we worked with local authorities, health boards and Network Partners to develop a Welsh Government endorsed guide to improve the commissioning of carer services.

CARERS TRUST US TO SUPPORT THEM

With approximately 7 million unpaid carers in the UK today (an estimated one in ten people), declining central Government funding and increasingly cash-strapped local authority resources, the services Carers Trust Network provides have never been more needed.

Building on our expertise with policy makers and Governments and 138 Network Partners, we are well positioned to champion the cause of caring.

With a presence in over 77% of local authority areas, we have the reach and expertise to tackle one of the UK’s biggest challenges.

The public and carers themselves struggle with the concept of being a carer. It is a little understood term, yet three in five of us are likely to become carers at some point in our lives.

A carer is anyone who cares, unpaid, for a friend or family member who due to illness, disability, a mental health problem or an addiction cannot cope without their support. Anyone could be a carer – a 15-year-old girl looking after a parent with an alcohol problem, a 40-year-old man caring for his partner who has terminal cancer, or an 80-year-old woman looking after her husband who has Alzheimer’s disease.

Carers provide a huge quantity of care across a wide range of conditions as well as completing practical tasks, nursing tasks, and giving emotional support and friendship. Carers Trust works to improve support, services, and recognition for anyone living with the challenges of caring, unpaid, for someone who is ill, frail, disabled or has mental health or addiction problems. With our Network Partners, we aim to ensure that quality assured information, advice and practical support are available to all carers across the UK.