Tag Archives: carers
Peer support for service users like Chill4us is for Carers
Why providers should invest in peer support for service users
A group of charitable providers have set up an independent organisation to provide peer support to service users. This approach can help improve service quality, efficiency and flexibility, say Bernd Sass and Sue Taylor.
Providers have long been told of the need to personalise their services and use any such redesign as an opportunity to involve and empower people with support needs. At the same time ‘lived experience’ has been seen as the answer to many problems in access to services and in achieving lasting and positive health and independent living outcomes, not to mention productivity gains. Yet little concrete action has followed from either providers or commissioners to bring the multiple positive effects of peer support to fruition.
Now a consortium of charities in the North East has set up an independent user-led organisation for disabled people in order to change this. Peer Support North East has been established as a community interest company by Age UK, Alzheimer’s Society, Your Voice Counts, Mental Health Matters and Sight Service Gateshead.
It now has 20 mentors who are supporting 350 of their peers a month, with disabled and older people supporting each other across age ranges and impairment groups, cutting across the boundaries between services.
Young carers receive £250,000 help in Norfolk
KING’S LYNN: New service to help young carers
YOUNG CARERS AT SNETTISHAM Jane Hallwood
A new Lottery funded service has been launched to help ease the passage into adulthood for young carers.
Jane Hallwood will be providing advice and emotional support to teenagers and adults who are caring for sick relatives in Lynn over the next three years.
Norfolk Carers Support Service has received a £250,000 Big Lottery grant to run the Adolescent into Adulthood Service in Lynn, Norwich and Great Yarmouth.
Ms Hallwood and the two other project workers will be filling the service gap for 16-to-24-year-olds.
The project aims to provide social and respite opportunities along with assistance with employment and further education and benefits advice.
Ms Hallwood is looking forward to working with youngsters in the area.
Family Carers need the internet for support and friendship
Why it’s important to get older people and carers confident online
Rates of digital exclusion in social care are higher than in the general population
The government’s digital by default agenda seeks to realise £1.8bn of savings by moving transactions with citizens online and it aims to boost the value of the economy by £63bn by developing better digital skills across the country.
Evidence suggests that being net savvy can save us time, money, make us feel better connected, less lonely and better informed. Conversely, being digitally excluded means having less (and diminishing) access to public and commercial services, to information and advice and to social interaction, all of which adversely impacts on wellbeing.
When depression affects 20% of older people living in the community and 40% living in elder care homes, compared with 10% of the population at large, and when national data shows that informal carers have lower levels of wellbeing than non-carers, being digitally literate is not just desirable, it becomes necessary.
Digital Unite research has shown that of those over 55s who are using the internet, four out of five (86%) said it had improved their lives, 72% said being online had helped reduce their feelings of isolation and 81% said using the internet makes them feel part of modern society. In addition, 20% of older learners in a Digital Unite social housing learning programme felt their understanding of health-related issues had improved as a result of being online.
