Warwickshire News Mine

Events took place at three venues in the south of the county; South Warwickshire Carers Support Service put on stands at Stratford market along with Tesco’s at Warwick and the Royal Priors Shopping Centre. 

SWCSS offers emotional support, information, advice, advocacy and assistance to those providing unpaid care for a relative, friend or other person who is disabled, frail, has a long-term illness or who may have a dependence on drugs or alcohol.

Foremost on the agenda for Carers Rights Day is ensuring carers know their financial rights.  Figures calculated by the University of Leeds estimate that the value of unpaid support provided by carers nationally stood at £87billion for the year 2006-07, exceeding the annual total spend of the NHS by some £5billion.

The figure for money saved by nearly 50,000 carers in Warwickshire was estimated in the region of £713million.

Dr Graeme Betts, Strategic Director for Adult, Health and Community Services is joint lead for care services for the Association of Directors of Adult Services.  He has long lobbied for better deals for carers, urging the government to make good its promise to transfer 5% of NHS spending on hospital services into improving services in the community.

Dr Betts said:  “We have done a lot in Warwickshire to help ease carers’ lives.  I am the first to say that we could and should be doing more and we now have a framework to enable us to include carers in developing the best kind of support.

“Carers play an integral role in keeping people out of hospital.  This enables local authorities’ care budgets to go further and is almost always the preferred option of the relatives or friends receiving care.”

Carers have rights to information, have their needs taken into account through and assessment and to have their voices heard.

Warwickshire County Council funds the Guideposts Carers Support Service and the South Warwickshire Carers Support Service to provide information and support to carers.

The council also provides assessments of carers’ needs that will enable eligible carers to get direct support services such as respite, breaks away and help with laundry or Direct Payments to help carers and the people they care for to create a package of support to best suit them.

And most recently, the county developed the Carers Partnership Board which enables carers to voice concerns to senior managers in health and social services.

Nigel Howard chief executive of South Warwickshire Carers Support Service said:  “Carers have an integral role in providing care in the home where the family member feels most comfortable as well as in allowing local authorities’ health budgets to go further.

“We are determined to support them in this and ensure that we not only help them provide care but also to maintain their own quality of life.”

Link to WCC