Carers in Wales: new reports.
Two new reports concerning carers in Wales have been published.
The first is a Public Health Wales funded publication by researchers at Cardiff University entitled Voices of Carers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Messages for the future of unpaid caring in Wales[1]. The report contains some positive messages but it is overwhelmingly negative – not helped by the perception of many carers that they ‘have felt overlooked during the pandemic and have felt a sense of injustice over the focus on paid health and social care workers by politicians and the media’.
To access the Cardiff University report, click here.
The second publication is a Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) Review of evidence relating to unpaid carers’ needs assessments in Wales.[2] Of this report, one of our good colleagues has highlighted its frequent use of the word ‘confusion’ – for example:
There is confusion surrounding the different terminology used by different local authorities …. Some use a ‘what matters’ conversation as a precursor to a carers’ needs assessment, whilst others use it as their legal carers’ needs assessment. This can lead to a lack of clarity about whether carers have received their assessment or not.
Our colleague notes that four years ago we drew attention to this issue in a paper in the Rhydian Journal What matters to Carers? Is a ‘What Matters’ conversation an assessment?, noting for example:
A cursory look at local authority information web pages would lead one to conclude that the term ‘what matters to you conversations’ has become synonymous with the statutory assessment.
Our colleague is currently supporting a carer who, on asking for a carers assessment was told by the local authority that it wouldn’t lead to any services as it was just the mechanism the Welsh Government used to get an idea of how many carers there are in the country.
How incredibly depressing.
To access the SCIE report, click here.
[1] Dan Burrows, Jen Lyttleton-Smith, Lucy Sheehan and Siôn Jones Voices of Carers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Messages for the future of unpaid caring in Wales (2021)
[2] Fiona Templeton, Deanne Mitchell and Rebekah Luff Review of evidence relating to unpaid carers’ needs assessments in Wales (SCIE 2021).
Photograph of ‘Llansteffan’ by Richard Jones -@lluniaurich
Posted 8 July 2021