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When Mary Webster gave up the job she loved to care for both her parents, she was shocked to find that she was left with no independent income, no support or information and that she became invisible.
She wrote a letter to The Times, detailing her plight that resulted in three sacks of mail being delivered from women just like her – the unmarried daughter expected to provide care.
Mary Webster quickly established contacts with politicians and founded our organisation, Carers UK, in the Grand Committee room of the House of Commons!
Throughout our 40-year history, we have campaigned for a better deal for carers –- securing the first legislative rights for carers through three successful Private Members’ Bills, now Acts, and the first carers’ income – Carer’s Allowance.
More recently, the Big Lottery has funded our work to help carers understand how decision making locally works and how you can get involved.
The results have been stunning. The evaluations show that carers have become more confident, well informed and have more say over what is delivered locally.
Strategically, services are getting better because they are more likely to meet carers’ needs and new services have emerged out of the local work.
New leisure services for carers from minority ethnic backgrounds, new services within hospitals giving carers better information and so on. And government is getting a better deal too, as they can get an informed viewpoint from these engaged carers.
We know that we have the power to change carers’ lives through advice and advocacy but we still come up against the same old problems – their rights are still poor, benefits are too low and some rules leave carers out in the cold struggling to make ends meet.
So in order to really help carers, we have to campaign against the big things – the fundamentals that have the power to change people’s lives. But changing those takes time, commitment and vision.
Some of the larger major trusts such as Tudor Trust, Rank Foundation, Lloyds TSB, Esmee Fairbairn and Henry Smith understand the role that active citizenship and campaigning play in delivering lasting changes to the everyday lives of six million carers as opposed to charities providing a direct service to 100 beneficiaries.
Direct service is still important – we know that if you speak to an individual carer – they will say, “How can you help me?” But they also want us to change the world when they become frustrated at benefit rules, at the poor delivery of services, or the discrimination that they and the people they care for often face. So campaigning and direct services need to run side by side.
One of the challenges for us is to ensure that funding applications we make to major trusts and companies are ’user friendly‘. In the past we’ve liberally used words like empowering, effecting change, enabling etc. But what does this mean to the people on the street?
It is easy for the reader to lose track of the real outcomes we are seeking to achieve through our campaigning. This is especially so, when we raise money from the general public who like to fund tangible things such as wheelchairs and animal welfare, for example.
We ensure we use plain English and remain focussed purely on outcomes and what we are expecting to achieve and this is having a far more successful outcome.
Frances Webb-Thurgood is Head of Fundraising at Carers UK.
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