There are many challenges to being a full time unpaid Carer for a family member or friend and The Carers Centre in Brighton and Hove aims to provide people with emotional support, advice and a well-deserved break from their caring role. We have been working alongside the centre to support Carers who have language support needs to access Carers assessments.
Our Bilingual Advocates help the Carer to prepare for the assessment – to understand the information leaflets and how the assessment may be able to help them. They then attend the assessment with the Carer and follow up afterwards to liaise between the Carers Centre and the Carer to ensure that the correct grant applications have been made and the Carer is able to receive all the support which they are entitled to.
We have supported a total of 15 people to access the assessments so far this year.
In July, several members of The Carers Centre team also delivered a really interesting and informative Carers Awareness briefing for some of our advocates and volunteers.
Here is some feedback from the Inclusion Coordinator at the Carers Centre on our work together:
“It’s been a really positive and useful experience joint working with your advocates. They are all extremely skilled and knowledgeable.”
Here is a quote from one of the Carers who we have helped:
“Thank you for the support that I have been receiving from my advocate. With her help, I have been referred to services and have started getting help. Without her help, I would struggle to apply for some grants which helped me financially at this difficult time.”
We look forward to continued partnership working with The Carers Centre to bring this much needed support to many more Carers.