Welcome to another blog post from carer activist and author Matthew McKenzie. I am updating carers on an important conference held once a year. This is the National Children and Adult Services Conference (NCASC), which is a three day conference for elected members and senior leaders in local authorities with responsibility for, or an interest in, the delivering effective services and opportunities for children, young people and adults.

The conference is promoted by The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) and The Local Government Association (LGA).

The 2023 conference was held over at Bournemouth International Centre on the 29th of November.

Hot off the heels of Carers UK report on ethnic minority carers. Carers UK provided a briefing follows Carers UK’s report on the experiences of Black, Asian and minority ethnic carers during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic.

As co-chair of the Carers UK ethnic advisory group, we brought together charities and carers from diverse groups who provided feedback and updates on how the community can support carers from diverse groups. You can see the briefing below.

Carers UK good practice guide to support minority ethnic carers

Taken from Carers UK site “Many carers from Black, Asian and minority ethnic minority backgrounds do not often recognise themselves as carers, with some languages lacking a distinct word for ‘carer.’ They may instead primarily see themselves as a family member, due to cultural expectations and not access resources available to them as a result.”

It is important to spread carer awareness and good practice at every occasion. So with the up and coming National Children and Adult Services Conference (NCASC), I was delighted to be given the chance to give my thoughts on the positive difference the Carers UK ethnic carer advisory group had made. I wanted to talk about the following.

• The difference Carers UK made for ethnic black and asian carers
• The challenges minority ethnic carers faced
• Good practice examples from organisations working hard to make a difference
• What I would like to see for the future

On the day I visited many stalls focusing on social care and support for those caring for them.

It was not long before I found myself at the main enterance hall listening to speakers on how they will drive social care for the country. It was exciting to hear Beverley Tarka who is the ADASS President (Haringey director for adults, health and communities).

Beverley talked about her mission to include carers as a key focus for inclusion in social care. ADASS who is a membership charity, a leading, independent voice of adult social care are launching their Carers Challenge 2023.

The carers challenge is about inspiring ways to provide better support for unpaid carers.

It’s a challenge to social care teams and people working with them to tell the story about how they’re making a difference to unpaid carers in their community.

The aim of the challenge is to bring those stories together into one online storehouse of great ideas that anyone working in care can use to inspire what they do next to improve support for carers.

More info on Carers Challenge 2023

Carers and diversity: evidence and practice

It was not long until we were up to do our talk about Carers and diversity. I was joined by the following.

Claudia Brown who hosted the session and facilitated the Q&A section. Claudia is the Co-chair, ADASS Carers Policy Group and Director of Adult Social Services, Brent Council.

Abinaya Kamalanathan who spoke about how Wandsworth carers centre worked with LGBTQ+ carers. She is the Carers Support and Development Officer and LGBTQ+ Project Co-ordinator at Wandsworth Carers Centre

Last but not least we had Melanie Crew who is the Senior Research and Policy Officer from Carers UK.

Melanie spoke about the work Carers UK had done to reach out and support diverse groups of carers.

Overall I enjoyed taking part in the conference. It was brillaint to speak about the work Carers UK and others have done and I learned so much from the audience who asked thoughtful questions.