Chief Executives

As Chief Executive you will want to ensure that:

1. Your authority leads an effective multi-agency Carers’ Strategy
   as required by guidance on the Carers and Disabled Children Act 2000 and the Carers Equal Opportunities Act 2004.  A toolkit to help identify progress on key themes of a Carers’ Strategy is available here
2. You receive a joint annual report from heads of Adults and Children’s services to ensure the strategy is making good progress and any interface issues are effectively dealt with.
3. Carers have easy access to ways they can be heard when your authority is making plans around commissioning and service development and training its staff.  In particular you will want to ensure carers:
   - can get involved in the scrutiny process
   - have a demonstrable impact on commissioning
   - are involved in new LINks service(Local Involvement Network(replacing patient and public involvement forums) from 2008.  More information is available here
4. Local Area Agreements are used in partnership with the NHS and District Councils as a vehicle to identify how carers can be better supported (such as by carer registration through primary care and support to working carers to ensure their full participation in the labour market.  Carers UK briefing on LAAs is available here
5. Your Human Resources processes fully support staff who are carers.  Reasons for doing this include:
   - up to 20% or your staff are likely to have caring responsibilities
   -the Work and Families Act 2006 requires you to consider their requests for flexible working. 
   - there is strong business case
   More information on this is available here
6. You have a plan in place to ensure that carers are always considered as a group. Public authorities need to consider the impact of all their decision making upon carers.  A tool to help you do this is here
7. You monitor joint working to see how often other agencies can be influenced in the way they support carers.  Public authorities need to consider the impact of all their decision making upon carers. This can be pursued through use of s3 of the Carers Equal Opportunities Act or shared targets with the NHS in the LSP