Resources

Carers’ Rights Guide

Written by a leading community care lawyer, Luke Clements, this Guide produced by ACE National outlines the principal rights of carers to support from health and social care services

Carers and their rights - the law relating to carers

SCIE Practice Guide 5: Implementing the Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act

The Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act 2004 marked a major cultural shift in the way carers are viewed: seeing carers not so much as unpaid providers of care services for disabled people, but as people in their own right: people with the right to work, like everyone else; people who have too often been socially excluded and (like the disabled people for whom they care) often denied the life chances that are available to other people.  The Act assists carers who want to work or who would like to access education, training or leisure activities.

Local authorities face different challenges in implementing the Act, depending on the complexity of local statutory and non-statutory networks, the demographic characteristics of the local population and geographical considerations.  Planning on a local level is essential to ensure that such factors are taken into consideration and local needs are properly met.

The purpose of the SCIE practice Guide available here  is to offer quick and easy access to information that will aid the implementation of the 2004 Act alongside previous related legislation.  The guide explores a number of areas and each includes:

• key research and policy findings
• ideas from practice and practice examples
• links to further information.

The Work and Families Act 2006

Information about the Work and Families Act 2006 and the Make WORK Work campaign that lobbied for carers’ employment rights can be found here

The Childcare Act 2006

The Act places a duty on local authorities to assess the needs of parents of disabled children as well as those of children under the Children Act, to provide child care for disabled children and information to parents.   A summary of the Act is available here

Between a Rock and a Hard Place
a campaign briefing that focused on employment and the challenge facing local authorities in implementing the new Childcare Act. 

Every Disabled Child Matters campaign (a partnership of Contact a Family, the Council for Disabled Children, MENCAP and the Special Educational Consortium) information available here , produced