Carers Trust

PWCF has supported the Trust since 2019, most recently through a three year strategic partnership, awarded in January 2023.

Carers Trust’s network of local carer organisations stretches from the Shetland Isles to the tip of Cornwall and across Wales and currently support carers across 81% of local authorities across England, Wales and Scotland. Carer centre locations range from remote rural areas to large urban centres. Unpaid carers can be of all ages, backgrounds and economic circumstances, and they care for people with a wide variety of conditions, so we offer a range of services and support that can be tailored to meet this diversity of needs.

PWCF funding will help to deliver an integrated strategy for carer involvement across all their work, with a particular focus on young people and young adult carer involvement. Carers Trust believes that caring responsibilities should not result in financial difficulty for anyone, yet in a recent survey 1 in 7 unpaid adult carers said they had used a food bank recently. It is therefore more important than ever to support carers, and to involve carers in creating solutions to the issues they face.

Malcolm, a volunteer spokesperson for the Carers Trust, said:

I feel a world away from the person I was, only a few years ago, when I first met Nem Pullar at Harrow Carers. Nem and his colleagues across all 33 London boroughs helped many people just like me, who find themselves in challenging personal circumstances as unpaid carers. As my personal employment advisor, he reminded me to keep focused on myself as well as the recovery of the person I care for.

Through Carers Trust Network Partners (like Harrow Carers), unpaid carers across London are helped to move into, or closer to, employment. The team’s dedication, support and understanding has had a huge impact, transforming the lives and life opportunities of hundreds of unpaid carers like me in London. We all desperately needed support to rebalance each of our caring roles and rediscover our sense of fulfilment and purpose.

Since then, I’ve returned to working in the industry I love and helped set up the new Film & TV Carers Club, run by carers for carers working in the film and TV industry.

The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund financially supports the Carers Trust, to help us deepen the involvement of unpaid carers like myself, in all areas of our work so that Carers’ voices are at the heart of everything we do. When for so many, it still sometimes feels, that being an unpaid carer, is being one of the last invisible, disadvantaged, marginalized, minorities.
So thank you again for acknowledging that our voices are heard. I hope in some modest way, to carry the PWCF’s message of support and understanding, which is needed more than ever, to bring about the changes needed to support and transform the lives and millions of unpaid family carers.