Carers Improvement Programme
On this page
- Lead Organisation
Haringey Council
- Project contacts
Emily Snelling
Emily.Snelling@Haringey.gov.uk
Haringey Council is reviewing our overall strategy and the support we offer carers. In line with the principles set out in the ‘Haringey Deal’ a commitment the council is making to co-producing its work, we want to make sure carers have an active role in influencing and developing our new approach.
We want to ensure that the new strategy provides a diverse range of support to meet carers’ needs, either as part of our approach to providing services in people’s neighbourhoods or digitally accessible so people can access guidance and support in a way and time that suits them.
We held a range of consultation events in 2023 with carers to seek their views on how we could improve support for them. There was some great feedback on what was already working, but carers identified five key areas for improvement we could focus our strategy on:
•Getting the basics right
•Information and communication
•Carers Health and Wellbeing
•Breaks
•Carers Concessions, Opportunities, Training & Employment
Carers recommended that any improvement work should be co-designed, and carers should be represented in the decision-making process. As a result, we’ve developed a carers coproduction group with the help of our partner Community Catalysts to help develop our Carers Improvement Programme. Our earlier consultation identified six key outcomes for the improvement programme and our new carers coproduction group will now work on improvement projects with the council and our partners to co-design solutions to achieve these outcomes. By making co-production the way we develop our new strategy and support programme for carers we believe we’re more likely to develop services that will provide the support that most matters to carers and will help them to maintain their care commitments alongside other commitments in their life.
- Partners
Haringey Unpaid Carers Codesign Group, Community Catalysts, Carers First, Barnet, Enfield & Haringey Mental Health Trust, Acute NHS Trusts (to be confirmed), Mobilise, North Central London ICB
- Project duration
September 2023 – April 2025
- Key beneficiaries
This programme is intended to benefit all adult residents providing unpaid care for an adult family member, partner or friend who needs help because of their illness, frailty, disability, a mental health problem or an addiction. We will also be exploring as the work develops how we can better align with our Young Carers offer.
Carers Improvement Programme
Why we started this initiative
The Haringey Deal outlines the council’s commitment to work with our residents to develop new ways of working including sharing power to enable people in the borough to:
- Have a greater say in decisions that affect them
- Help design the services they use
- Work with the council to solve long-standing and difficult problems
Haringey recognises that carers face significant challenges related to their caring role and the importance of the role that the council and partners should be playing to make sure carers have access to the right support at the right time.
Our goals
The aim of this project is to coordinate coproduction of initiatives to improve the support we offer carers in our community and maximise the impact of the resources we’ve secured for carers, reduce risk of duplication and improve carer experience in line with the council’s duties.
We’ve taken a coproduction approach with this programme so the exact method of delivery will be influenced by this group and therefore may change/develop as the programme develops.
Carers helped us identify the following key outcomes for our new strategy:
- Improved carer identification
- Income maximisation for carers
- Improved carer health and wellbeing
- Improved carer resilience
- Improved communication
- Improved support, advice and guidance
How we’re implementing it
Haringey wrote to all registered carers inviting them to become part of a carer’s coproduction group. More than 50 applied. We selected 18 to take part based on demographics, their location in the borough and caring experience to ensure that the group represents the diversity of Haringey’s carer community. They will work alongside council officers and partners for a minimum of twelve months to design, develop, mobilise, and evaluate projects aimed at improving support for carers in Haringey.
We’re offering support to members of the coproduction in the form of training, coaching or peer support to ensure that each group member is able to participate equally within the group.
Initial workshops/training sessions will be facilitated by our partner organisation Community Catalysts to ensure that we create a positive environment where innovation can grow. Putting carers, staff, and partners on an equal foundation, enabling us to build reciprocal, accessible and genuine working relationships.
The coproduction group will set out the way that they will work together to ensure that it is inclusive and accessible for all members. Community Catalysts will support the group to evaluate both the projects impact and the group members satisfaction after 6 months and 12 months of the project inception to ensure that the group is able to reflect on the progress of the improvement programme and to ensure that the group is effective and carers feel fully engaged and supported.
Coproduction group members will be supported to gain skills and confidence to codesign initiatives and improvements. Community Catalysts will support the coproduction group to agree the groups aims and vision for the carers’ improvement programme. The Carers’ Coproduction group will be responsible for prioritising projects that sit within the improvement programme. We are not trying to prefigure what these are, they could be based on improving services that exist or be entirely new projects.
The improvement proposals will be ratified by a carers board which will include carers, adult social care team and partner organisation representation.
Embedding different ways of working takes time, and commitment. Haringey believes that it’s essential to establish the right environment for co-production to be most effective.
Building reciprocal, accessible and genuine relationships with each other for the benefit of the programme’s development. We are working with partners Community Catalysts and Carers First to build a strong coproduction group who feel confident & empowered to bring forward measurable change.
Diversity of the coproduction group. We recognise that to ensure the success of the carers coproduction group it’s important to have a broad range of residents from different backgrounds, life experiences and caring responsibilities.
Be prepared to be more transparent. This is why we have decided to work with Community Catalysts to support us in forming our coproduction group. Facilitating training in coproduction skills and agreeing our coproduction approach we hope that our coproduction group is truly founded on the SCIE principles of coproduction.
Showing the impact of this improvement programme. We intend to ensure that we identify quantitative and qualitative measures which will be available to the whole project group to enable us to make informed decisions and problem solve together to maximise the programmes impact.
Be prepared to acknowledge what is not working well. When consulting with residents with ‘lived experience’ Issues are raised about what is not working well. Being able to acknowledge that there are faults or flaws opens up opportunities to consider what changes can be made to improve outcomes and resident satisfaction.
I am passionate about supporting other carers in Haringey and hopefully can help create and provide more facilities and activities within the community.
RB carers coproduction group member