Additional support for carers links M-P
If you are a carer, you may find the organisation's listed below useful. (Caring with Confidence does not endorse any of the organisations or services offered).
Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association
National Family Carer Network (The Network)
NHS Choices – your health, your choices
No Matter What (Autism) by Sandy Howarth
The Princess Royal Trust for Carers
Carers Direct
Website: www.nhs.uk/carersdirect
Tel: 0808 802 0202
Carers Direct is a practical and comprehensive information, advice and support service for carers.
Call the Carers Direct helpline if you need help with your caring role and want to talk to someone about what options are available to you. The helpline advisers can give you information to help you make decisions about your personal support needs and the needs of the person you're looking after. This information includes assessments, benefits, direct payments, individual budgets, time off and maintaining, leaving or going back to work or education.
The helpline staff will also tell you how to complain if anything goes wrong with any of the services you use or put you in contact with your local authority or NHS services. Our helpline advisers can put you in touch with specialist national or local sources of help, including social care, health and self-help networks and resources.
Maidstone Carers Project
Tel: 01622 685 276
The Maidstone Carers Project is a point of contact for anyone living in Maidstone and the surrounding rural areas, looking after a family member, partner or friend. It provides information about local services, support systems and the benefits available, offering practical assistance in completing benefit claim forms. The project acts as confidential listening ear, offering emotional support over the phone and face to face. It also has a long standing regular Carers Forum enabling carers to speak directly to the planners and managers of Health and Social Services.
Martlets Hospice Hove
Tel: 01273 273 406
Marlets Hospice provides both practical and emotional assistance to the carers of their patients. As well as this support, they also help to direct carers to outside organisations – largely Crossroads and the local Carers Centre. Contact is made with the carers once their relative has visited the day hospice and then followed up approximately 2 weeks later with the offer of a meeting in their homes. There is a 6-week evening ‘education/support’ programme for carers which is held 2 – 3 times in a 12 month period and pamper mornings during a special Carers Week.
Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association
Tel: 08457 626262
The MND Associations Strategic Framework demonstrates their commitment in supporting the families and carers of people with MND. They continue to work in partnership with others to raise the profile of carers and influence the standards of available information and support. This year they will be developing the help they already provide ensuring support and information is tailored to meet the diverse needs of carers and provided over the entire episode of care giving.
NAM
Web: www.aidsmap.com
Tel: 0207 840 0060
NAM is an HIV information charity providing a range of resources for people living with HIV and those working to support them. Their mission is to support people living with HIV to live longer, healthier lives and to this end, are committed to providing independent, accurate and accessible information.
National Family Carer Network (The Network)
Tel: 07747 460727
The Network’s key objective is to support and work towards promoting better life chances for families that include someone with a learning disability. They aim to link other groups and organisations that support these families, giving a national focus to a wide range of policy issues concerning carers of adults with a learning disability. The Network hold regular events enabling groups, organisations and individual family carers to come together, share ideas and discuss policy issues.
NHS Choices – your health, your choices
Web: www.nhs.uk
NHS Choices is a comprehensive information service that helps to put you in control of your healthcare. The service is intended to help you make choices about your health, from lifestyle decisions about things like smoking, drinking and exercise, through to the practical aspects of finding and using NHS services in England when you need them.
The Carers Direct area of the website also contains information, advice and support specifically for carers and can be accessed from the NHS Choices homepage.
No Matter What (Autism) by Sandy Howarth
Web: www.autismguide.org
Following my son’s diagnosis of Autism in Dubai, I gave up my Interior Design career and educated myself on various teaching strategies to help him.
Seeing some progress in Steven’s abilities, I returned to the UK with the hope of offering him a better chance to fulfil his potential. He has been in an educational setting provided by the LEA for the past eight years and made no progress. Therefore I have decided to teach him at home again on a full time basis. Steven is now fifteen years old and I will be picking up from where we left off when he was last taught at home at the age of seven.
A lack of support from the education system led me to put my energy into writing and promoting "No Matter What" to help Steven and others in the same situation as myself. Through this book I want to help other parents to appreciate what they can achieve with their children through perseverance and love.
OCD-UK
Web: www.ocduk.org
Formed in 2004, OCD-UK is the leading national charity, independently working with and for people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
Listed amongst the top 10 most debilitating illnesses by the World Health Organisation in terms of loss of income and decreased quality of life, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is thought to affect 2-3% of the UK population.
It is our belief that everyone affected by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder should receive the most appropriate and the highest quality standards of care, support and treatment. Our objective is to make a positive and meaningful difference in the everyday lives of people affected by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, by providing accessible and effective support services and by campaigning for improved access and quality treatment and care for people with OCD. We believe it is vital that every person affected by OCD receives the highest quality of treatment and care that they are entitled to and deserve. We facilitate a safe environment for people affected by OCD to communicate with each other and provide mutual understanding and support.
Partners UK
Web: www.partnersinpolicymaking.co.uk
Partners UK is a national network of families who have a disabled child or disabled adult and their allies, working to build capacity to work in partnership at local, regional and national levels.
Partners in Policymaking is an innovative leadership training programme for parents and relatives of children with disabilities and for disabled people. Partners UK have designed several bespoke courses using the successful Partners model. Each course has been developed using information given by family carers over the past twelve years.
Partners UK has continually built capacity, by having course graduates shadowing the coordinator on courses and then being supported to run courses themselves. All course coordinators are parents of a child/adult with significant support need.
The Princess Royal Trust for Carers
Web: www.carers.org
Tel: 0844 800 4361
The Princess Royal Trust for Carers was created on the initiative of HRH The Princess Royal in 1991. At that time, people caring at home for family members or friends with disabilities and chronic illnesses were scarcely recognised as requiring support.
The Trust is now the largest provider of comprehensive carers support services in the UK. Through its unique network of 141 independently managed Carers' Centres, 83 young carers services and interactive websites, The Trust currently provides quality information, advice and support services to almost 310,000 carers, including over 15,500 young carers.