The high value that Sutton places on its thousands of unpaid carers is being highlighted during this year’s National Carers’ Week.
The Week, which runs until 12 June, has the theme of Building Carer-friendly Communities – communities that support carers to look after their loved ones well, while recognising they are individuals with needs of their own.
In Sutton an estimated 20,000 people juggle their jobs, education and other responsibilities to care for family and friends.
Carers may be of all ages, from a child or young person helping to care for their mother who has bipolar disorder, parents looking after a child with spina bifida, a working-age adult whose partner has Multiple Sclerosis, or an older person looking after a parent with dementia.
Such carers make up around 10 per cent of the borough’s population. Yet they are almost invisible as the work they do goes largely unseen and unnoticed.
National Carers’ Week is an annual awareness campaign which takes place to celebrate and recognise the vital contribution made by the UK’s 6.5m carers. It is also a time of intensive local activity with thousands of events planned for carers across the UK. In 2014 more than 5,000 events took place across the country.
Events taking place in Sutton this week include:
Sutton Carers Forum – a Q&A session with speakers including Nick Ireland, Head of Adult Social Care at Sutton Council, from 12 noon to 2pm on Wednesday 8 June.
Open Morning Information Session – for new carers and the opportunity to meet other carers, at Sutton Carers Centre from 11am to 1pm.
Carers’ Quiz Night – a fun annual fundraising event with fish and chips or a vegetarian option, at Robin Hood Junior School on Friday 17 June, cost £12.
GP Surgery Drop-in sessions – Information, advice and support for carers are being held at Benhill and Belmont GP Centre on Tuesday 7 June from 3.30 to 5.30pm, Carshalton Fields Surgery on Thursday 9 June from 4.40 to 6.30pm and Wrythe Green Surgery on Friday 10 June from 10.30am to 12 noon.
Caption: The new Mayor of Sutton, Cllr Richard Clifton, held a lunchtime reception on 6 June for some of the borough’s carers to mark the start of this year’s National Carers’ Week.