North Northamptonshire Council Carers Strategy 2024-2029: 2025 review

The fully co-produced North Northamptonshire Carers Strategy 2024-2029 was introduced in April 2024. It included feedback, from consultation and engagement, with unpaid carers with lived experience of providing care to family, friends and loved ones.

Following the first year of implementation we sought views on our progress, including what has worked well, any challenges and any achievements.

We received 37 responses.

16 people said they were not aware that we contract Northamptonshire Carers to deliver unpaid carers services on our behalf, 10 said they were aware, 2 responded "not sure", the remainder did not know.

6 responders said we did meet their needs as an unpaid carer, the remainder either told us "no" we did not, they "didn't know", or they did not respond.

5 carers told us it was “fairly easy” to find the support they needed, 11 told us it was “not at all easy”.

5 carers told us they had been offered a carers assessment in the last year, 8 said no, 14 did not answer.

Reflecting on the assessment itself, we gained the following information:

3 carers told us they were signposted to information, but this wasn’t enough. 1 carer received a break, which they found beneficial. 2 carers used the support line/accessed a one stop shop /joined a peer group and created an emergency plan. 4 carers told us that the support groups offered by Northamptonshire Carers were not offered outside of traditional working hours, they felt this was unfair. 2 carers told us they struggled to access respite for their disabled child, an additional carer told us “more respite care needed” but did not provide any context to this. 2 carers told us they felt there were barriers in accessing support as an unpaid carer.

We are grateful to the carers that responded to the online survey, we also gained feedback face to face with carers, which resulted in some clear themes. The survey and face to face feedback tells us that although some good things are being achieved because of the Strategy, we have some identified target areas. These are:

• raising awareness of our partnership and funded contract arrangements with Northamptonshire Carers
• the carers assessment isn’t feely offered, and does not always meet needs
• carers want more offers outside of working hours
• accessing respite is important

What we will do:

• Raise awareness through our social media, and webpages, Local Area Partnerships, the VCSE sector, GP surgeries and hospitals. We will also explore other ways of sharing messaging.
• Through the contract monitoring process, we will work with Northamptonshire Carers on the following:

• Access to carers assessments
• Improving auditing to monitor carer outcomes
• Explore ways of improving offers for carers that work
• Audit the respite offer for adults, that sits within the contract

• Arrange a series of Carers workshops to set out the priorities and implementation of years 2 and 3 of the Strategy, the workshops will be open to carers to feedback their lived experience.