Annual review 2007/08

Recovery and social inclusion

Better opportunities for carers

Making a difference

Gordon Brown recently announced the development of a new strategy on carers at a reception at Downing Street we attended. So we’re making it a priority that carers’ needs are fully met.

Making it happen

• We put together a policy paper about what needed to change for carers based on the experience of people using our National Advice Service. We said that:
  
  
  • Problems around the sharing of information needed to be resolved once and for all.
    
    
  • Carers should not lose their allowance when reaching retirement age.
    
    
  • Specialist mental health training should be available to all carers, such as Rethink’s Carers Education and Training Programme.
  
  
• Our Chief Executive, Paul Jenkins, sat on a task group at the Department of Health where he put forward our recommendations.
  
  
• We held a breakfast meeting in Parliament for MPs where a Rethink member spoke about his experience as a carer and what needed to change.
  
  
• Carers told us about their experiences through our website and local events - this helped us to put together our evidence for the Work and Pensions Committee. We then lobbied MPs at party conferences to hold an inquiry into carer’s benefits.
  
  
• The Service Delivery Organisation (SDO) funded research project ‘Positive and Inclusive: Effective ways of mental health professionals sharing information with carers’ identified the importance of training professionals in good clinical practices. Professionals agreed they lacked the confidence and skills to support carers whilst balancing legal requirements and policy guidance with practical judgments.
  
  

Making an impact

• So far 102 MPs have backed our call for better information for mental health carers, including some very prominent politicians like Liberal Democrat spokesman Vince Cable, the Chair of the Health Select Committee, Kevin Barron and Labour MP Diane Abbott.
  
  
• Building on the outcomes of the SDO research project, our Research Team is now working together with an expert Project Advisory Group of mental health professionals and carers on developing a training resource appropriate to different mental health professional groups, to enable effective information sharing with carers.

Moving Forward

• We’ll launch a two year national campaign ‘We Care, We Count’ to get the support carers need and to ensure they retain a good quality of life.
• The new carers’ strategy will be published in June 2008. As part of our campaign we’ll do all we can to extend the reach of our CETP programmes so that more carers get the help and support needed.
  
  
• The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee will report in the summer 2008 and we’ll ask a Rethink carer to attend the session and speak directly about their experiences.

Moving you forward

Please get in touch with the Rethink’s Research Team if you would like more information or have any other queries about the Carers and Confidentiality project. It is coordinated by Áine Duggan (Research Manager) aine.duggan@rethink.org.

Sign up to campaign with us at www.rethink.org/campaigns.