Carers Week 2023 Catch Up
The Carer Positive team have had another very busy but highly sucessful Carers Week in 2023.
On Tuesday we were at Carers Scotland's 'Are You Identifying Unpaid Carers? If Not, Why Not?' event at the COSLA conference centre in Edinburgh. Sue spoke about employment and the employers role in supporting members of staff who have caring responsibilities. Attendees were also able to ask questions during the panel discussion and get involved in brainstorming solutions to the challenges of identifying carers and how we can build valuable support.
Wednesday saw Christine visting the Wheatley Group for a lunch and learn session for members of staff. The event was well attended by both carers and other members of staff who wanted to find out more about caring and how they can help provide workplace support. Wheatley are one of our Exemplary level Carer Positive employers and also had a training session from Carers Scotland scheduled as part of their Carers Week activities.
We were back in Edinburgh on Thursday for the Carers Week Event for Employers in Edinburgh and the Lothians. This event was held in partnership with the local carers centres - VOCAL, Carers of East Lothian and Carers Of West Lothian - who were able to provide insight on how they could work with employers and help them build workplace suport for carers on a local level. We also heard from Peter Lawson on the varied forms of support available for working carers at Natwest, as well as a carer's perspective from Karen Walton from Baillie Gifford.
MECOPP were in attendance at the Edinburgh event on Thursday so we were also able to take the opportunirty to present them with their Carer Positive award!
After so much travelling, it was nice to finish with an online event this morning. We had a brilliant session with North Lanarkshire Carers Together and employers from both North and South Lanarkshire. The interactive event generated some really good discussion, and you can catch up with the whole thing here.
We would like to say a huge thankyou to everyone involved in organising these events, the speakers who were kind enough to present and all of the attendees who took part by asking questions or engaging in the discussion. Thankyou for making this week's events such a sucess.
Finally, it has been brilliant to see so many of our Carer Positive emplyers sharing how they are taking part in Carers Week 2023 by posting on social media about their Carer Positive status, getting involved with workplace events and joining the campaign on the Carers Week website. Lets keep the energy going and continue to build your support for working carers throughout 2023 and beyond!