Swansea MAD worked with the West Glamorgan Carers Liaison Forum to facilitate a series of engagement events for Carers during March – April 2022.
The events aimed to promote understanding of the Carer’s Strategy, understand the priorities of carers and co-develop an action plan to implement the strategy.
At the end of the events, we were able to gather the views of carers and representatives from Neath Port Talbot Carers Centre and Swansea Carers Centre. Their suggestions and opinions were then collated into a comprehensive report that was submitted to the forum for consideration and possible action.
In the course of facilitating these events, we learnt a lot about the experiences and the realities of carers and we decided to highlight a few of them;
- Respect and acknowledgement of carers are very vital and go a long way.
- Carers are experts; experts by experience, and their inputs and suggestions should be valued.
- More organisations and corporations should become carer-friendly and create a conducive environment for carers to thrive in their careers.
- Service providers should be more empathic to the daily struggles of carers.
- Carers are people and are more than their caring responsibilities. They are people with dreams, hobbies and goals and they should be allowed to thrive in the other areas of their lives.
In conclusion, carers form an integral part of the health and social care sector and the society at large. Respect, validation and appreciation (even though it does not begin to scratch the surface of what is needed to compensate carers for their sacrifices) will go a long way in showing our carers how important and valued they are.
So during Carers Week 2022, the entire Swansea MAD team, would like to thank carers for their daily sacrifices and resilience.