You are a carer if you are not paid for looking after a relative, neighbour or friend, who could not manage without your help due to their age, physical or mental illness, addiction or disability.

  The theme of this year's Carers Week is

PREPARED TO CARE?

Every day at least 6,000 people start caring. Becoming a carer can impact significantly on a person’s life – it takes time, energy, can leave you isolated and can be costly.

Through Prepared to Care? Carers Week will highlight the impact of caring on daily life and, with an ageing population and higher incidence of disability and serious illness, encourage the public to think whether they could manage a caring role.

Prepared to Care? will also help those already caring to make sure they are accessing all the practical and emotional support they need to care safely and look after themselves.

This year, Carers Day is being celebrated in Pembrokeshire on Friday 14th June at Rudbaxton Hall, Crundale. Joy James, Carers Strategy Co-ordinator for Pembrokeshire is organising this informal event running from 10.30 am to 2.30 pm.

Drop in and have a chat and find out what is going on for carers in Pembrokeshire. Food provided and information, therapies, tea and a chat.

For further information (including transport and replacement care) please contact
Joy James, Pembrokeshire County Council on - Tel: 01437 764551.

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CARER'S RIGHTS DAY

“Getting help in tough times”

At the event on the 30th November 2012 in Letterston carers were presented by:

• A working carer talked about getting help in tough times
• The Department for Work and Pensions regarding the upcoming Welfare Benefits reform
• Communities 2.0 showing what help can be given to access benefits on line
• PAVS launching the “I Matter, We Matter” campaign

Also on the programme:

Carers Forum, therapy taster sessions, information stands and lunch:

Responses from carers to this event:

• Great day, good information and presentations, great sharing experiences and ideas with other carers and listening to them. Good venue – fab lunch. Loved the pamper session. Thank you.

• Thanks for a great day. The Men’s group went really well, with all of us sharing stories and experiences of what it’s like being a carer.

• Thanks to everyone involved for the carers' event. It was a first for me and I found it informative, supportive and helpful. The therapy taster-sessions were wonderful - and free - and the lunch was also very good.

CARER'S

“In Sickness and in Health”

The 2012 Carers Day was held on the 19th June at the Rugby Club in Haverfordwest. As always, we asked everyone who attended to complete an evaluation form so that we would know what had worked well, and where future events could be further improved.

Presentations

The presentations and information stands were rated as ‘very good’ (63%) or ‘good’ (31%) by most. Some carers commented on how useful and informative the presentations had been, and the IT support was appreciated to ensure there were no technical hitches! We will make sure this is on-hand at the next event too.

Presenters on the day: Peter Llewellyn, Diane Price, Nicole van Schie,

Sue Blantern, Sarah Tomlinson, Jenny Gough

Forum Session

The discussions recorded in the forum sessions were around the theme of the Carers Measure and are covered in more detail in a separate article. It was suggested that forum sessions could be improved by grouping carers according to the nature of their caring role. In order to find out whether this will work better for carers, next time carers will be asked whether they’d like to be in a group with other carers in a similar situation- so keep an eye out for this question on the registration form for the next event.

Information Stands/Consultations

Carers found the Information stands to be ‘very good’ (57%), ‘good’ (30%) or ‘OK’ (13%) which is also reflected in the fact that 96% said they had made new contacts at the event. It was noted that due to the wealth of information available, the area was crowded. Some people also found that they didn’t have enough time to get all of the information they required. These comments will also be taken into account when choosing venues for future carer’s events.

Workshops

The workshops available included a ‘Looking After Me’ taster session, a stress and anger management workshop, a Communities 2.0 computer session and health checks. The vast majority rated all of the above as ‘very good’. There was a comment that the therapy sessions were missed, having been an enjoyable part of previous events. This will be taken into account when planning future events.

The Event Overall

The majority of responses were very positive with 73% rating the day as a whole as ‘very good’ and another 21% rating it as ‘good’. The organisation and administration of the day was felt to be ‘good’ or ‘very good’ by everyone who provided feedback. The lunch was generally scored as ‘good’, although there were suggestions that less processed food would be nice in future. Many carers commented that they had a ‘good…excellent…brilliant…top banana day!’ and had found it to be a good mix of carers and professionals.

For more information:

Nicole van Schie, Carers Development Worker

at Pembrokeshire Association of Voluntary Services

on 01437 771196 or Nicole.vanschie@pavs.org.uk