All-Age Unpaid Carers’ Strategy for Oxfordshire
The new strategy for supporting unpaid carers of all ages in Oxfordshire 2023-26
Overview
There are more than 50,000 unpaid carers in Oxfordshire, giving vital support to friends and family members who would not be able to cope otherwise. While this can be rewarding, it can also impact on the carer’s own health, education, employment, finances, and general wellbeing.
Following extensive engagement with carers, we learned further about the impact of COVID-19 and the cost-of-living crisis on carers. They told us that they found the lack of communication between services, the difficulty in finding information in both health and social care, and the need to repeat their stories frustrating.
In response, partners within Oxfordshire that provide support to carers have developed an All-Age Unpaid Carers’ Strategy. The Strategy sets out commitments made by partners from the council, health and voluntary sectors in Oxfordshire to improve support to carers and address their concerns and frustrations.
A public consultation on the proposed strategy ran for four weeks in June 2023. The responses from carers to the consultation showed support for the priorities and commitments, as well as showing us what needed to be clarified or adjusted in the final strategy.
Action plan
To deliver the commitments in the strategy and keep track of progress, the partner organisations have set themselves actions. The actions will be reviewed by a group of unpaid carers and partners, and the plan below updated every three months.
Updates can be found on Carers Oxfordshire’s website: www.carersoxfordshire.org.uk/unpaid-carers-strategy
Review of services
During the development of the strategy, reviews of existing support to unpaid carers in the county were carried out. The following reports contain the details of those reviews.