North Lanarkshire Carers Together were commissioned by Health and Social Care North Lanarkshire to carry out a Short Breaks Consultation with carers.
In May and June 2023, we consulted with a total of 177 carers, gaining valuable insights into what carers understand about short breaks, and what they want from short breaks in future.
You can read about this in our report ‘Improving carer breaks for unpaid carers in North Lanarkshire’ which we have now published.
North Lanarkshire Carers Together (NLCT) was commissioned to carry out a consultation
into carer breaks on behalf of Health and Social Care North Lanarkshire (H&SC NL). This
topic was high on the agenda for H&SC NL, but a carer’s story brought to the attention of
the department proved a catalyst for progressing this work.
The carer’s experience was of attempting to access respite care for her husband ahead of
taking a holiday, a break from her caring role. However, the process became difficult and
arduous with poor outcomes both for the carer and for the person being cared for. Being
denied the ability to book respite more than two weeks in advance, the carer had to resort to calling around 12 care homes (with the help of a social worker) desperately trying to access a respite place in their own locality and then in wider North Lanarkshire to no avail.
The eventual outcome was that the person being cared for could only access a respite
place in a care home outside of North Lanarkshire which was inadequate for their care
needs. The stress involved in both arranging the respite and related to the lack of
required standard of care, hugely impacted the point of taking a break in the first place as well negatively impacting on the person being cared for in the aftermath of respite.
This example led to H&SC NL commissioning a wide-ranging consultation to assess
carers’ experiences of accessing breaks in North Lanarkshire. This is with a view to making improvements in the overall carer breaks systems across our localities.
As part of this consultation, 59 carers responded to an online survey, 110 carers on
average responded to 4 key questions posed on carer breaks at the NLCT Annual
General Meeting on 5th June 2023 and 8 carers in total responded via our Carer Forum
focus groups.
The findings of this consultation present a landscape in which carers are in great need of
breaks, yet report too many barriers in the way of them being able to access them. These
barriers span lack of knowledge and information to practical elements such as lack of
replacement care and the work involved in taking a break in the first place.
NLCT has made recommendations and considerations that we hope will be taken into
account on behalf of the carers we consulted with for this report. A key recommendation
is that carers are involved in every future step of the work in North Lanarkshire to improve the carer breaks systems.
Thank you to every carer who took the time to respond to our survey, attend our AGM and take part in our focus groups. At NLCT we continue to fulfil our ‘We asked, You said, We did’ promise, and will report back to carers on the outcomes of this consultation report.