The Carer Health Team – Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust (CHT) was initially launched in September 2013 by West Sussex Joint Commissioning Unit (JCU) to address the needs of adult carers within West Sussex in response to an identified gap in the provision of specialist clinical support for informal carers across the county of West Sussex. At that time 10% of the population identified themselves as unpaid carers with over 6.5 million carers in the UK and of these approximately 84,000 are in West Sussex.
The pressure of caring can take a toll on a person’s own health and wellbeing. The detrimental impact of caring on health is often exacerbated by carers putting their needs last and delaying medical appointments and treatment.
There was a proposal to establish a carers wellbeing service that would have a significant impact on meeting Government and local West Sussex Carers policy set out in:
- The Government’s “Recognised, valued and supported: Next steps for the Carers Strategy” (2010)
- The West Sussex Carer’s Inter-agency Strategy 2010-2015 (West Sussex Public Health Plan – 2012 to 2017 Healthy and well in West Sussex)
- The JCU Commissioning Brief re Carer Wellbeing Clinicians Initiative.
Following this the Carers Health Team was commissioned for a pilot period of eighteen months. This subsequently resulted in the team becoming a substantive service.
The vision was to provide an efficient and knowledgeable service to Carers within West Sussex which would cover all their health needs, and also to encompass the impact of the caring role, which is often overseen and underestimated.
The pilot period of the service was benchmarked against the NHS’s Commitment to Carer’s policy (2014), NICE guidance (NG21) and CQC key outcomes. The NHS’s commitment to Carers outlines eight key priorities and the Carers Health Team demonstrated that these were addressed within the work that was undertaken with their carers. Following this the JCU commissioned The Carers Health Team as a substantive service to be provided by Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust.
The service is unique in that it is clinician-led and focuses on the informal carers’ individual needs, and identifies them as “expert partners in care” and which compliments other support services locally; The aim of the CHT is to improve the health and wellbeing of carers and the people they care for by providing preventative and therapeutic advice and support.
The service demonstrates have to deliver recommendations set out in section 1.1-1.3 of the NICE guideline for supporting adult carers (NG150) in practice.
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