Directors Adult Care/Care Trusts etc

You will want to:

1. Ensure the authority has a Carers’ Lead with sufficient influence and status.  This person will usually be within Adult Services but will need effective links with Children’s Services, the Health Services and other partners.  ‘It does not remove the responsibility of other workers to address the needs of carers, but should offer leadership and a coordinated approach to carers' issues’.  The SCIE Practice Guide is available here
2. Ensure there are clear protocols to ensure effective joint working between Adults and Children’s Services (particularly around transition and young carers) and give the Chief Executive and multi agency Carers Strategy Group an annual position statement with the Children’s Director on this area of work.
3. Ensure carers’ issues are fully integrated within overall commissioning strategies.  Carers are not an add-on needing a separate approach but need to be fully involved in the way plans are made to support service-users as well as having their own support needs met.
4. Ensure carers’ voices are heard in a range of processes to include:
   - Multi agency carers’ strategy groups
   - Training of staff
   - Commissioning forums and tendering processes
   - The new LINks service(Local Involvement Network(replacing patient and public involvement forums) from 2008.  More information is available here
   - Local Area Agreements and Local Strategic Partnerships
   - Feedback on front-line practice, especially carers’ assessments
5. Ensure there is a culture among managers of supporting staff who are carers around:
   -Flexible working practices
   - Confidentiality around their own caring responsibilities in an environment where services they/their family use may be very sensitive
6. Ensure carers have excellent access to information through a range of mechanisms including:
   -A multi-agency information strategy so all agencies can support carers to identify themselves (Job Centres, GPs, schools etc)  A toolkit to help identify progress on key themes of a Carers’ Strategy is here
   - Leaflets available in a fully accessible range of formats
   - Effective and co-ordinated web-sites
   - Excellent networking and strategic support to the voluntary sector
7. Ensure the use of the balanced scorecards provided by CSCI as guidance to measure progress on the strategy, and the implementation of all relevant legislation, in partnership with carers available here
8. Ensure that the Council’s eligibility criteria address risk to carers as well as service users.
9. Ensure the NHS is fully engaged with the strategy through the PCT Carers’ Lead (as required by Our Health, Our Care, Our Services) and by identifying a process for recruiting carers’ champions in Acute Trusts and Mental Health Trusts as well.  This can be pursued through use of s3 of the Carers Equal Opportunities Act or shared targets with the NHS in the LSP.
10.  Promote equal opportunities for carers in line with guidelines from the General Social Care Council Standards for practitioners: ‘As a social care worker, you must protect the rights and promote the interests of carers.’   This includes ‘ Promoting equal opportunities for carers ‘ and ‘Respecting diversity and different cultures and values’.  A tool to help you achieve this is available here