Local carers consultations

• Contact your Local Council or Primary Care Trust to find out when the carers consultations will be taking place in your area and how you can take part.
  
• Encourage other mental health carers in your area to take part in the consultations.

Your local experience and knowledge will be central to your consultation response. However, following last year's Prime Minister's Carers Strategy important points you could raise include:

• Carers Training. Will ‘Carers with Confidence’ training be available locally?
  
• Training of professionals in Local Authorities to improve carers support and commissioning. Will the local authority be including ‘information sharing’ in this training? Will the local authority be involving carers in the content development of this training. Will the training include specific information on mental health?
  
• Carers respite. Rethink research shows that 1 in 3 mental health carers take less than a 2 day break per year. How will local respite provision ensure that respite is prioritized to those people in greatest need? Will the local Primary Care Trust monitor carers respite by which groups receive respite funding eg by the condition of the person cared for or by the number of hours which the carer spends on caring. How is the local PCT consulting with carers on how new funding for respite should be spent?
  
• Personal budgets. How is the authority going to ensure that service users are properly supported to manage personal budgets so that the responsibility does not fall to carers?
  

Read Rethink's reports on mental health carers to find out more: Under Pressure (190 kb)  and Who Cares? (101 kb) .

Read about the Prime Ministers Carers Strategy and Rethink's campaigning around this.

Tell other carers about local carers consultations in your area by taking part in our online discussion forum.