It's Carers Week 2016

What is Carers Week?

Carers Week is a yearly campaign that highlights their challenges and the contribution that they make to families and communities across the UK.

Caring will affect all of us at some stage in life. Statistics show three out of five of us will become carers at some point in life.

The UK currently has 6.5 million people caring unpaid for an ill, frail or disabled family member or friend.

Carers help with everything a person needs, from getting them washed and dressed in the morning and giving them medication, to cooking, shopping and cleaning.

Each year organisations large and small come together and organise activities and events over Carers Week to create as much awareness of caring as possible.

Theme

This year, the focus is on building carer friendly communities. This is communities that support carers to look after their family or friends, whilst recognising that they also have their own needs.

Caring for someone is a part of life, but it can be very stressful, upsetting and tiring. As a community, we need to recognise that carers themselves sometimes also need a helping hand or a shoulder to lean on.

Get involved

You can pledge your support here and help build carer friendly communities.

You can also plan your own activities and spread the awareness of carers week to your friends and family.

Resilience in caring

Caring is so satisfying. It can strengthen and deepen relationships and teach new skills which can help you in life. But, caring can cause you to become ill yourself and feel isolated from the rest of the community alongside financial issues that may arise.

If you are caring for someone, building resilience is key. Not only does it improve your general health and wellbeing, but being happier in yourself means leading a more productive lifestyle.

The Embrace Initiative

At Embrace-learning, we want to help support and train carers in resilience. Our mission is to apply evidence-based principles and techniques to the building of resilient individuals, organisations and communities.

We want people to learn about the importance of resilience, health and wellbeing and help them to build on this for themselves.

If you are caring for someone, you can take our online learning course “About me: Building Resilience for Caring”. The course aims to help learners to identify and find resources, technologies and sources of support in order to prevent their caring responsibilities from becoming overwhelming. It includes tips on staying healthy, managing time and acknowledging and accepting your feelings as a carer.

Embrace-learning is a UK leading provider of quality e-learning resources to the Health and Social Care sector. Find out more about us on our website www.embrace-learning.com

You can read more of our blog posts here.