West College Scotland (WCS) has become the first Scottish college to achieve the Carers Federation Quality Standard in Carer Support (QSCS) accreditation, Carers Federation is delighted to announce.

The Carers Federation Quality Standard in Carer Support, developed by carers to provide accreditation and training for organisations, helps to raise awareness, remove some of the barriers for carers, develop appropriate policies and procedures and improve access to support. The QSCS demonstrates good practice in supporting carers in the wider community.

With 7,500-8,000 full-time students over four main campuses and five satellite sites, West College Scotland is the largest regional college in Scotland. They provide a wide-range of course and study pathways including distance learning, reaching up to 22,000 students overall across areas of high deprivation with low educational aspirations and achievement.

Naomi Sykes, QSCS Development Worker, Carers Federation Limited said:

“The Carers Federation Quality Standard in Carer Support (QSCS) accreditation demonstrates West College Scotland’s commitment to improving access to education for young and young adult carers.”

The Quality Standard criteria helps schools, colleges and universities develop effective processes to identify student carers and to improve their wellbeing, learning experiences and educational outcomes. Importantly, the process helps participating organisations to provide consistent provision of support and enables them to monitor the collective and individual outcomes for their students with caring roles.

Naomi added, “West College Scotland has developed comprehensive systems to ensure student carers are recognised and supported to achieve their aspirations and goals, raising awareness of young and young adult carers across the college and increasing understanding of the additional challenges they face in education.”

For more information on how your school, college or university can better support carers, please visit our QSCS page.

Carers Federation is proud to announce a new project from Action for Young Carers: AYC: Flourish.

AYC: Flourish builds upon the fantastic work undertaken by Action For Young Carers over the COVID-19 pandemic, providing online cooking tutorials and lessons via zoom alongside local nutritionist and food safety expert, Rupert Aikman.

Over the coming months, AYC: Flourish will provide young carers and their families with more online cooking courses as part of a wider health and wellbeing package which will include exercise sessions, arts and crafts, mindfulness activities and life skills workshops.

The sessions kick off on June 1st with a Zoom cooking workshop for young people of primary school age, and Thursday June 3rd for those of secondary school age. Moving forward, as the lockdown roadmap allows and with careful consideration of the safety of everyone involved, other workshops will be a mix of in-person and online.

“Carers Federation is delighted to receive the funding from the Masonic Charitable Foundation that allows us to continue with and expand our online cookery courses for young carers. These classes have proven to be very popular during lockdown and we’ll be using the funds to bring in additional online activities for these young people and their families,” said CEO Rob Gardiner.

The cooking sessions have been a huge success so far, with 50 young carers and families taking part over the course of the pandemic. The AYC team has adapted to very difficult circumstances and provided an invaluable sense of community and learning for young carers and their families, who otherwise were facing severe isolation as a result of the lockdown rules.

One young carer had a fantastic journey through the cooking classes:

“Thank you, thank you for running the cooking course. My young person has struggled terribly with anxiety over the past year, which accumulated in a long period out of school. She used to come to all your sessions pre Covid but she hadn’t accessed anything in over a year. Until now,” a parent told us.

I signed her up for the cooking course under her strict instructions that she wasn’t going to be on video and the mic was stayed off! The first session, she really struggled to even stay in the kitchen, never let alone engage in cutting or chopping. In fact she was so overwhelmed, she couldn’t be part of the second session! However over the coming weeks, she has got involved slowly which has accumulated in a fab last session this afternoon!

I wish I could have shown you the smile on her face when she took a bite of her burger that SHE made with very little help from me!! It put such a spring in her step! Thank you so much for all the wonderful work that you do with our young carers who often get overlooked due to the caring of others!”

The Run For Heroes campaign, which challenges people to run 5k and donate £5, has broken the £1m barrier and continues to raise money for NHS workers currently battling COVID-19.

To take part, you simply need to go out for a run on your daily exercise. Then you can tag a few friends in social media (5 sounds about right doesn’t it?) and challenge them to do the same. That’s £30 raised for charity and everyone’s got some nice healthy exercise. Win-win.

“During these uncertain times, like many, we wanted to find a positive way to help the fight against COVID-19. When we were out running during our daily exercise allocation, we realised how many others were doing the same, ” say Olivia, India and Alice – the brains behind the operation – on the website.

“So we thought – Could we donate our one hour of daily exercise to the NHS staff who are working tirelessly to protect us? If we’re all exercising anyway, let’s do it for a fantastic cause. Let’s do it for our NHS heroes. Let’s help them help us.”

NHS staff are currently working around the clock to deal with the steady stream of patients due to Coronavirus, but with lockdown measures in place for three weeks, the British public are hopeful that their actions will help flatten the curve and ease the pressure on the NHS.

Are you going to take part? Tag us in your post-run pic and we’ll be sure to share it.

Residents and staff at the Bryn Celyn Care Home cheered up the nation last week amidst the Coronavirus lockdown, proving that being inside doesn’t necessarily equal boredom.

The residents, who are as young as – 80 and as old as 102 – remained in their wheelchairs while the care home staff pushed them into the middle of circle where they tried to gobble up as many multicoloured balls as possible.

Despite being at greater risk compared to most of us, these residents weren’t about to let the Coronavirus blues get to them. As as General manager of Bryn Celyn, Michelle Williams, is keen to remind us, they’re not oblivious to what’s going on outside their care home.

“We just did it to cheer them up,” she said. “We try to be as positive as we can – we don’t want to walk around all doom and gloom. There’s enough doom and gloom out there. We’re just trying to keep things as normal and have fun, keep smiling and make sure our residents have fun and are safe. They know what’s going out there.”

Have you and your family been playing any inventive games? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter. And if you’re in need or any help or advice, we’ve set up a general COVID-19 page with information. And there are pages on health and wellbeing, shopping and finances too.

Yesterday, people across the U.K took to the streets (from their windows, doorsteps and balconies) to clap the NHS and caring staff that are working on the frontline to manage the corona virus outbreak.

And the appreciation of our wonderful health service continues as Brighton and Hove Albion kick off a campaign to gift 100,000 tickets to NHS staff, in recognition of the wonderful and brave work they do.

The UK football season, from The Premier League to amateur leagues across the country, is currently on a hiatus as measures are implemented to “flatten the curve”. For many, the first thing they’re looking forward to is getting back to the football on a weekend and enjoying the community spirit that brings. And in a positive signal of intent, NHS staff will be some of the first people back on the terraces if this ticket initiative is anything to go by.

Paul Barber, the Brighton chief executive said: “If each of the 92 clubs committed on average one thousand tickets, with The FA donating for a future England international and Scottish Premier League and Irish League clubs also contributing, we could easily top 100,000 tickets for these heroes. We are seeing some brilliant initiatives from clubs all over the world, and I am hopeful that there is more to come from the football family.

“Of course the biggest support we can all show our NHS heroes is by following that crucial government advice on social distancing, self-isolating, hand hygiene and using tissues to catch, kill and bin coughs and sneezes.”

So far Bournmouth FC have taken on the campaign and announced they will donate 1000 tickets to NHS staff, so now the imputes is on some of the larger clubs (no disrespect to Brighton and Bournmouth) to accept the challenge and give away some of their tickets for when the season resumes.

Currently, the global conversation is solely focussed on COVID-19 and the wide-ranging consequences to all aspects of our daily lives. It can be difficult to focus on what’s important with the sheer amount of news hitting our screens every minute of every day. Some are scaremongering, some are irrelevant, some are clickbait and some are genuinely useful to know.

But in the spirit of positivity, we at The Carer’s Federation have decided to unearth some of the positive news stories emerging to share with you. Enjoy them. Share them with your friends and family. And remember to follow official advice the UK government regarding our individual responsibilities to help slow the spread.

We start with the #clapforourcarers campaign – a rousing idea to support NHS staff up and down the country who are putting themselves on the front line, and under increased pressure, to deal with the Coronavirus patients and general public.

The campaign is asking for as many people as possible to clap their hands together on Thursday 26 March at 8pm to thank all doctors, nurses, carers, GPs, pharmacists and other NHS staff working hard to help those affected by the coronavirus. Other countries in Europe, such as France, Spain and Italy have been doing this on a regular basis but as the U.K comes to terms with the current measures set in place by the U.K government to contain Coronavirus, the public finds new and inventive ways to spread positivity.

The campaign website states: “It’s to get everyone to clap for everyone that works in the frontline, doctors, nurses doctors, pharmacists and EVERYONE related at the frontline.”

For more information on the campaign you can visit www.clapforourcarers.co.uk. Check back on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for more positive news story blogs over the next few weeks.

The Carers Federation is committed to the safety and wellbeing of its clients, staff and the general public. This applies especially during the current outbreak of the Coronavirus, which some of you may know as COVID-19.

We regret that we have to follow Government advice and are suspending all but essential activity at our Nottingham and Gateshead offices. Our staff are working from home where possible and are all taking the steps necessary to limit the transmission of the virus.

We are staying up to date with the latest regulation and recommendations regarding the ongoing pandemic and as such, will review the situation daily. If you have any general enquires we ask that you email us rather than call. If you don’t know which department to email, please contact info@carersfederation.co.uk

For the latest information on COVID-19, please visit the NHS website: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/

Our service users can find specific contact details for support on the Our Centre page of the website

In the current circumstances and with Carers Federation not staffing our office, service users and their families who wish to contact us urgently can do so by:

Phoning and leaving a message on the office phone 0115 9629310. We will regularly pick up messages and pass them to appropriate staff.

Emailing info@carersfederation.co.uk – we will check this account daily.

If you or your family receive support from AYC you can contact the following staff on their mobiles:

Roz Lynch 07739237147
Sarah Camplin 07852354037
Donna Powell 07720084304
Kate Hill 07852358823
Charmaine McCarthy 07852357099
Natalie Knight 07889088279

If you are a volunteer and wish to speak with Naomi her number is 07841067098

For any users of our counselling service who require additional support they can call Rob on 07793525831.

For all the above numbers, if not answered please leave a message and we will get back to you.

Take care and best wishes