Support for Carers
On this page
- Lead Organisation
Westmorland and Furness Council
- Project contact
Westmorland and Furness Council have developed two initiatives to help improve support for unpaid carers.
Occupational Therapist Support for Carers:
1) Emotional support for carers.
2) Physical support such as teaching manual handling techniques, including writing them down/taking photos, so the informal carer has something to refer back to.
3) The Occupational Therapist giving their phone number to the informal carer, so they can contact them for advice. Carers report that this is reassuring for them and makes them feel ‘listened to’.
Safeguarding Awareness for Carers:
1) A newly developed initiative from the Safeguarding team to raise awareness of safeguarding issues relating to carers. A PowerPoint presentation has been developed which will be delivered across all social care teams, with the aim of better supporting carers and ensuring that everyone is aware of the potential safeguarding risks that carers may experience.
- Project duration
Ongoing
- Key beneficiaries
Carers
Support for Carers
Why we started this initiative
We are aware that carers are providing significant levels of support and are potentially under the radar of our services.
We recognise the enormous contribution that carers make and the difficulties that they may experience in their caring role, including possible anxieties about the involvement of social workers. We want to improve the support that we provide to carers and reduce the impact of their caring role.
Our goals
- To improve our relationship with carers and to achieve better outcomes for carers in terms of their wellbeing and how supported they feel in their role.
- To focus on relationship based practice with carers, building on the work done by Occupational Therapists to support carers.
- To increase awareness across all teams in regards to the potential safeguarding issues for carers and from this, to foster better preventative work.
- For carers to feel listened to and included as part of safeguarding work, to improve outcomes and to build a relationship of trust with Adult Social Care.
How we’re implementing it
Occupational Therapists are working already with a relationship-based focus, including carers and recognising their needs as part of their holistic assessment.
Safeguarding Carers is going to be delivered across all teams via face to face engagement sessions, over the coming months. Feedback has been obtained from carers and this will continue to be sought, to ensure that we are meeting their needs.
Learnings
Carers have provided verbal feedback that being acknowledged and supported during Occupational Therapy assessments of the cared for person, increase their ability to cope and enable them to better manage their role. Small gestures such as having a dedicated phone number to ring, has made all the difference.
There are specific safeguarding issues that relate to carers and increased awareness of these, enables support to be provided in a way that is meaningful for carers and enables their wishes and views to be captured and included in safeguarding adults plans.