Been a while since I have done a blog to update the carer forums and groups that I run. I thought to avoid the summer heat and stay inside in order to provide a brief update of the National ethnic mental health carers group for July.

The agenda for July was support from Carers UK who are a national charity fighting for the voice of unpaid carers in the UK. There are millions of carers providing care and support for someone with long term illness. This includes minority carers.

• Carers UK presents on the Impact of caring.

Carers UK examined the latest Office of National Statistics and how those figures showed the impact of caring. It is good to get an overall picture of caring through the country.

For the ONS census of 2021 – The Office for National Statistics showed

• There are an estimated 5.7 million carers in the UK
• 1.8 million care for 9 hours a week or less
• 1.5 million care for 50 hours a week or more
• Every day 12,000 people in the UK become carers

Carers UK provided some information aimed at those caring for someone with mental illness. This was that not everyone with a mental illness needs a carer, and not everyone who needs a carer has one. People with mental illnesses have lots of different needs like anyone else, and these will affect the support they need.

Early last month I did a joint talk with someone from Mind who are a charity that focuses on support for those with menta illness. Carers UK reminded members of the forum about the resources Mind has on their website.

Carers UK were also kind enough to speak about the impact of caring on minority ethnic carers. Carers UK presented how experiencing mental health issues, may make the caring role even more challenging. Rates of mental health problems can be higher within some Black, Asian and ethnic minority groups, as a result of racism and discrimination, and social and economic inequalities.

Carers UK also noted that experiencing prejudice, discrimination or harassment when accessing services can lead carers feeling distrustful of support services as a result.

This can also be down to struggling to obtain information and advice due to language barriers, plus not having the opportunity to shape and influence health and social care services. Some carers may feel that they have no ‘voice’ in the system, and feel unable to complain or raise concerns about services

Carers UK give a wealth of information and resources aimed at unpaid carers and those who support carers. Carers UK representative Zahra presented some of the amazing resources that carers can use.

• Update from members of the group.

As usual the national ethnic mental health carers group supports the NHS England framework, which is the Patient Carer Race Equality Framework. The forum provided space for carers involved at their NHS trust to update. We had updates from West London Health trust from their recent PCREF listening events.

We also had an update from Wandsworth talking therapies, where they updated on the recent “Bridging Minds” forum and how the community of Wandsworth provided feedback their experiences on the impact of racism and discrimination. I also managed to attend the forum, which was supported by Wandsworth Carers (see poster below).

There was an update and engagement from Oxleas on their focus for ethnic minority carers, but there is still more work to do. Other updates were from carers involved at Cambridge & Peterborough NHS trust and also Kent & Medway NHS trust, plus Cygnet who is a provider of mental health services.

For the forum on the 30th of August, we will look at the topic of carers rights.

Thanks for reading.