West Yorkshire and Harrogate Partnership

West Yorkshire and Harrogate has been identified as one of six regions to work in partnership with NHS England to develop an approach to better support unpaid carers across our area.

There are an estimated 260,000 unpaid carers living in West Yorkshire and Harrogate, including children and young people caring for parents with long-term health conditions.

Many carers are ‘hidden’ and provide the majority of care without formal support. Being a carer can be stressful and have a major impact on your health, relationships, education and employment. With this in mind we are working with NHS England to ensure that identifying carers and supporting them is further embedded within our work. This includes developing ways to support the existing and future workforce who balance caring responsibilities, signposting and identifying service standards for all organisations – not just in the public sector.

You can read more about our approach to improve the support for unpaid carers in West Yorkshire and Harrogate here.

West Yorkshire and Harrogate Vision for Carers event September 2018

West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Parternship (WY&H HCP) shared their vision and aspirations for unpaid carers, including young carers living across the area at an event in Leeds.

Over 60 health and care professonals working in primary care including GP practices, social care and the community sector attended the event to find out how they can contribute to the WY&H HCP vision for unpaid carers. The event, supported by NHS England, focused on improving the quality of life and well-being of the 260,000 carers living across the area.

Working in parternership with Carers Trust, Carers UK, The Childrens Society, and the Care Quality Commission (CQC), NHS England have developed voluntary quality markers for GP practices, based on what cares have said matters most to them. The CQC have also endorsed the quality markers as a model of good practice and will be looking how these markers from part of future assessments.

Event speakers included David Ross, NHS England Patient Experience, Dr Gordon Sinclair, Clinical Lead of Leeds Clinical Commissioning Group and Fatima Khan Shah, West Yorkshire and Harrogate Carer Programme Lead.

You can find the presentations here.

The report of findings is currently being developed and will be uploaded to the website once finalised.

Supporting carers in West Yorkshire and Harrogate update April 2018

You can read an update on the work of West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership programme for unpaid carers here.

Event to support carers across West Yorkshire and Harrogate December 2017

West Yorkshire and Harrogate, Health and Care Partnership shared their vision and aspirations for the 260,000 unpaid carers, including young carers, living across the area at a special event in Wakefield on Thursday 14 December 2017. Over 60 representatives from voluntary and community organisations including, Carers Count, Carers Wakefield and District, Carers Leeds and Carers Resource attended the event supported by health services, local councils and Carers UK to find out how they can contribute to the WY&H vision for unpaid carers and share good practice.

Guest speakers on the day included Rob Webster, Emily Holzhausen OBE from Carers UK, Fatima Khan-Shah, Partnership Lead for Carers and Neil Churchill from NHS England. Read more here. You can also view the event presentations here presentations here and view the event findings report on our 'Get involved / engagement section'.

To support this work we also wanted to gain an understanding of the organisations across West Yorkshire and Harrogate that provide support for unpaid carers. A mapping exercise was undertaken and this report provides a summary of that exercise.

Although caring can be rewarding, there is substantial evidence that carers have poorer physical and mental health than those who are not caring, and that the more care you provide the more likely you are to have poorer health.

For many carers, the biggest priority is the health and wellbeing of those they care for and as such they are more likely to neglect their own health and are known to put off treatment for themselves. – with this in mind we are working closely with primary care professionals, including GPs and practice nurses to give carers the support they need.

Watch this film about young carers support:

Our work plan to support unpaid carers

We are committed to improving the health and wellbeing of 260,000 carers living in Bradford District and Craven; Calderdale, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield.

You can read more here.