ACE National : Care to take a look

Care to Take a Look: Delivering Effective Policies for Carers

This resource, available as a CD (?) from add web address or accessible as a web resource by clicking here, is a powerful aid to organisations wanting to increase their knowledge of carers and caring and to develop and deliver effective policies. For local authorities and other statutory agencies, it provides material that will assist them both to operate good employment practices and, importantly, to understand the benefits of delivering effective support services that enable carers to carry on their vital work.

Care to Take a Look is an audio-visual learning and information resource that contains the following modules:

Basic facts – an overview of carers:

who they are
what they do
how many there
how much care they provide
how caring affects their health

Employment, Health and Money - insights into the issues facing carers and what they themselves wish for to enable them to: access employment; enjoy better health; and, overcome the financial poverty that often accompanies caring.

A self-assessment tool for organisations to check the progress they are making in their awareness of carers’ issues and the involvement they have with carers. This tool contains 17 questions, provides advice and an action plan based on the responses to these questions.

Regional statistics – information is provided for each local authority area or parliamentary constituency on the following:

total number of carers
employment status
hours of care provided
proportion of carers in poor health.

Life course tool – this interactive tool profiles four individuals who have had no caring responsibilities in their lives. You can then choose from a number of scenarios which powerfully illustrate the impact of becoming a carer on the course of their lives.

Case studies – the situations of six carers are presented to illustrate how their lives are affected by caring, particularly in relation to employment, health and money.