How the Action Plan has Developed

Many carers across Camden spend a large amount of time caring for somebody else, or more than one person, and every caring experience is different.

Whilst there are legal duties which give carers rights to statutory support, carers expressed similar concerns and experiences about not all carers identifying as unpaid carers; and not knowing their rights or how to access support. Carers also speak of the need for having better joined up health, social care and other local government and voluntary and community services.

There was an idea to create an action plan, this would be dynamic, evolve over time and wouldn’t just sit on a dusty shelf with no-one looking at it. Key to the action plan is coproduction, with carers directing development. As the plan developed, carers could identify priority areas and think through actions for how to achieve these.

At the heart of the development of the action plan, is a working group that includes, and has been connecting with, carers in Camden to understand their carer experiences. Roles on the working group were advertised to unpaid carers. The members of the working group include carers and former carers, alongside services that support carers including Adult Social Care, North London Mental Health Partnership, Camden Carers and Mobilise. Carers in the working group led development of the plan, sharing their experiences and knowledge.

The working group found that there was already lots of information available about what is important to carers and where there could be gaps in people identifying as carers and accessing support. This information came from directly speaking with carers in Camden; exploring what data is held by services in Camden about carers; and looking at national research too.

This was used to create a draft of the action plan. The draft was then taken to many places, organisations and services to test and grow the ideas in the plan. This includes focus groups to develop areas of the plan and sessions aimed at speaking with specific groups of carers, for example single parent carers. Camden Carers Voice, a group led by carers for carers and facilitated by Camden Carers, were also a key voice in helping shape and develop the plan.

We acknowledged that other organisations and services also have their own work areas and plans for carers, and so we took every opportunity to connect the action plan into these.

What we have now is an action plan that has been coproduced with carers. Launching the action plan is just the start.