A carer is someone who provides unpaid help to family or friends who would not be able to manage without support. This could mean caring for a relative, partner or friend who is ill, frail, disabled or has mental health or substance misuse problems.
There are difficulties in finding the right language to distinguish ‘carers’ from people employed to provide care and support. Family Carers, Informal Carers, Unpaid Carers all cause some offence to some, and Unemployed Carers would not only offend but also be inaccurate with about 1/8 also in full timework! Many carers, however, just identify themselves as a spouse, child, relative, friend or neighbour ... which sometimes makes it harder for us to reach such people to offer such support as we can.
According to the 2011 census, the number of people identifying themselves as carers has increased from 5.2 million in 2001 to 5.8 million in England and Wales. This is projected to increase to 9 million by 2037. In Walsall there are currently estimated to be over 30,000 people undertaking a caring role.
Within learning and development we have 3 main roles: to provide learning opportunities to carers, to develop the workforce’s knowledge and understanding of the carers role and rights, and to encourage support to those in both categories, carers within our workforce.
Carers are very welcome on the vast majority of our face to face learning events, with no charge made, and can access information about these on our Learning & Development Training list
As part of the response to the Care Act, we have updated our e-learning offer to include Carers support and information module which is an essential part of induction for all new staff and of course is avaliable for all existing staff and carers. Access the course here https://walsall.learningpool.com .
