Carer Support Wiltshire welcomes new guidance on carers breaks from NHS England

by Leave a Comment

Carer Support Wiltshire welcomes this week’s new guidance from NHS England on supporting carers which will give unpaid family carers the opportunity to take a much needed break.

The new guidance, published on Wednesday, highlights how the Better Care Fund, includes £130million to be spent specifically on supporting unpaid family carers and should be prioritised by commissioners as part of the drive to integrate health and social care services.

In 2010, an additional £400million over 4 years was made available by the government for carers breaks. Since then Carer Support Wiltshire, a Network Partner of Carers Trust, the UK’s largest charity for carers, has been working to make sure that health and social care services spend this on supporting carers. Carer Support Wiltshire and Carers Trust have been calling on local commissioners not to forget the needs of carers. Many carers find their own health deteriorates as a result of caring, and support for carers can help them to care for longer – therefore reducing the need for people to be admitted to hospital or residential care.

Lindsay Poulsom, CEO of Carer Support Wiltshire, said: “This new guidance will help us to work with our local partners to improve support for carers in our area .

It recognises the incredible contribution carers make as well as the economic imperative to ensure they are supported.

We know that investing in carers can really pay off for the NHS and local authorities seeking to improve health outcomes. Funding can make a vital difference to carers by providing breaks so that they can maintain their own health and well-being and prevent families from reaching crisis point.”

Related

Share

    Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>