Carers News. Islington Carers Hub. Welcome to issue 7 of Carers News.

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1 Carers News Issue 007 February 2014 Welcome to issue 7 of Carers News. This issue includes new advice session times, events and groups, updates about benefits, The Flexible Breaks Fund, The Carers Emergency Card and more! All the staff at would like to warmly welcome our new manager Liz Mercer, who joins us from Disability Action in Islington or Carers UK s latest edition of Looking After Someone Carers Rights Guide is out! It covers carers legal rights, benefits, practical and financial help and more. You can download a free guide from the Carers UK website or call us for a copy. We would also like to say big thanks to our former manager Gavin Williams who has moved on to become the Consultancy and Training Manager at Carers UK Congratulations Gavin! - and to Dominic Dowell who has been acting manager at. All the best for 2014 from. Are you caring for someone who does not get support from Social Services? Find out about grants for help towards hobbies and breaks provides support and advice to people who are looking after a friend or relative because they are sick, frail or disabled. Contact us to register with the Hub, to come to our advice sessions or groups and to join our mailing list. Telephone or or info@islingtoncarershub.org Flexible Breaks Fund page 5 in partnership with There s lots of information about support and advice for carers on our website, including our new range of downloadable factsheets just call us for a copy if you do not have access to the internet.

2 Contact for advice information and support around all aspect of your caring role, including health and community care services, welfare benefits and money, your legal rights and emotional and practical help for you and the person you look after. Carers Advice Sessions We have made some changes to our advice sessions so that we can reach more carers in Islington: TUESDAYS Mildmay Community Partnership Woodville Rd N16 8NA with Rashina Time: 1.30pm 4.30pm WEDNESDAYS NEW (Alternate weeks) Islington Chinese Association, 21 Hatchard Road N19 4NG with Rashina Time: 10.30am 12.30pm Drovers Centre North Road London N7 9EY with Nathan Time: 1:30pm 4:30pm NEW Northern Medical Centre, 580 Holloway Rd, N7 6LB with Ade Time: 1:30pm 4:30pm THURSDAYS St Lukes Community Centre, 90 Central St EC1V 8AJ with Ade Time: 2pm 5pm NEW University College Hospital T7 Ward with Rashina Time: 2pm-4pm FRIDAYS The Medical Centre 140 Holloway Road N7 8DD with Ade Time: 9am 1pm Whittington Hospital Magdala Ave, N19 5NF with NathanTime: 1.30pm 4.30pm Call or us to make an appointment. Please bring any relevant paper work with you. Support Groups Our groups for carers are friendly and welcoming, and any personal information shared is respected. We sometimes have guests come to talk about specific topics at the groups. Please contact Spike at Islington Carers Hub if you would like to come along. Please see the back page for dates. Young Adult Carers Group for carers aged Last Tuesday of the month, pm (call Spike for venue info) First Tuesday of the month, pm Fin Future Seven Sisters Rd, N4 2DA Drovers Older Carers Group Last Monday of the month, pm The Drovers Day Centre, North Road N7 9EY Over 50s Carers Group at St Luke's Community Centre Every first Monday of the month noon, Luke's Centre, 90 Central Street, London EC1V 8AJ. Black and Minority Ethnic Carers Group Last Friday of the month pm Fin Future (as above). Please contact Ade at ICH for details about this group and extra outings and activities throughout Here s a picture from the BME carers group meal last year Warm Words A group for all carers who want to listen to good quality stories and poems. No reading is required, just come along and enjoy! Every second and fourth Wednesday of the month, pm at Upper Holloway Baptist Church, 11 Tollington Way, N7 6GR. 2

3 Carers Pathway Group As many of you know, every two months we hold what we call a Carers Pathway Meeting, where carers in Islington get the chance to tell the decision makers at Islington Council what s going well, and what s going not so well, in all their service provision. Issues raised at the meetings go directly to the Carers Providers Forum (see below) and to commissioners via the Carers Commissioner Linda Wan, who attends the meetings. The group is also one of the ways the Council consults with carers. We are looking for new members for the group to strengthen its voice and build on the excellent work that the members have put in to date. You are welcome to attend a meeting and just observe to see if it s for you. Please get in touch if you would like to find out more about the group. Dates for 2014 are: December Carers Pathway Meeting, Or, Any Excuse for a Good Raffle In December 2013 we were in the festive spirit, so we combined the Pathway Meeting with a Christmas lunch. Our much-missed former manager Gavin Williams gave a presentation on future plans for the Hub and introduced our excellent new interim manager Dominic Dowell. Linda Wan, Islington Council s Carers Commissioner, spoke about care services and carers services in the borough and stayed for lunch to listen to individuals concerns. This was followed by an impressively big and varied buffet lunch and a quality raffle. If you came, thank you SO much. It was a special afternoon and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. If not we missed you! We hope to see you at our next Pathway meeting on Tuesday 18 February to hear more of what the Borough is doing for carers and help us tell them what life as a carer is really like. Tuesday 18th February 2014 Tuesday 15th April 2014 Tuesday 24th June 2014 Tuesday 12th August 2014 Tuesday 14th October 2014 Tuesday 16th December 2014 Meetings are usually held at Fin Future Seven Sisters Rd, London N4 2DA (near to Finsbury Park tube station) unless stated otherwise. Carers Providers Forum chairs the Carers Providers Forum. This is a meeting where organisations that support carers meet to talk about developments in services and how to work in partnership to best meet the needs of carers in Islington. Recent work has included planning for events like Carers Rights Day and Carers Week. Current members of the forum are: Centre 404 / Alzheimer s Society / The Stress Project / Mind Yourself / CASA Friends Partners Families (drug and/or alcohol service) / Age UK / Healthwatch Islington / The Stroke Project / Islington Chinese Association / Bluebird Care Islington Other organisations working with carers are very welcome to join the Forum. Please contact Islington Carers Hub for details Providers Forum Dates: Thursday 13th February 2014 Thursday 15th May 2014 Thursday 14th August 2014 Thursday 13th November 2014 The meetings are usually held at FinFuture Seven Sisters Rd, London N4 2DA 3

4 Mental Health Awareness Course We still have a couple of spaces left on our FREE training for mental health carers. This is a 6 day course, run jointly between ICH and Islington Mind. Mondays 10, 17 & 24 March and Weds 2, 9 & 16 April 10.30am -3.00pm (carers are invited to ALL sessions) For more information and to book a space please call Spike at FREE Moving & Handling Techniques Workshop! Tuesday 11 March, pm, Finfuture Mike and Lillian from Bluebird Care will be demonstrating how best to protect your own health and safety while caring for your loved one, especially while lifting or helping someone to move around. The workshop will be relaxed and informative and you will be able to join in to practice the techniques! Contact Spike for more info. For the latest news and events from Islington Carers Hub please sign up to our monthly newsletters via our website. Improve your Balance! Monday 17 Feb, 2pm-3.30pm at Finfuture. Come along to this very gentle exercise and balance improvement class for carers, in partnership with Age UK. You ll warm up your body, get your heart, lungs and muscles working, and feel better afterwards. Come for fun, to chat and socialise with other carers, and to give yourself some TLC. Check with your GP first if you have any serious health issue. All ages and abilities welcome. Contact Spike at Islington Carers Hub for more info. Carers Emergency Card The Carers Emergency Card is a FREE scheme for ALL people caring for someone in Islington. The Emergency Card scheme can give peace of mind that someone will be able to look after your loved one in an emergency. How does it work? You simply fill in a form with that includes your details, the person you care for (including their care needs) and two people you wish to nominate who could help in an emergency. The details are registered with the Telecare team at the Council and you are given an Emergency Card the size of a credit card to carry with you. On the card is: Your name Your unique ID The phone number to ring to access emergency care support What happens in an emergency? If something happens so that you can t get back to the person you care for, ring the number on the card (emergency services are trained to look for cards like these in the event of an accident). When a call is made, the council will contact the people you have nominated. If they are not available and the person you care for already gets a care package from Social Services they will be able to get up to 72 hours of free emergency care in their home. To find out more about joining the scheme please call us on / / or info@islingtoncarershub.org 4

5 Grants for breaks and hobbies The Flexible Breaks Fund If you are caring for someone who does not get support from Social Services you may be able to apply to The Flexible Breaks Fund. This is a grant of up to 200 per person. If the activity includes the person you care for you can also apply for funds for them (up to 600 per family). It s not just for holidays! The grant can also be used for things like: Equipment for a hobby at home / sitting services / course fees / gym membership/ exercise classes / massage or other complementary therapies / gardening / a cleaner or home-help / day trips / driving lessons / transport costs / cinema, theatre or football tickets.and lots more! As the fund is limited, priority is given to applicants who have not benefited from the fund before and grants may only be applied for once every two years. Both the carer and cared for person must live in Islington and the carer needs to be 18 or over. There are separate funds for people caring for another adult and people caring for a disabled child. We have extra funds for people caring for someone at the end of their life. Former carers can also apply, up to six months following the end of their caring role. The panel meets every two months. Please note we are unable to reimburse carers for things they have already paid for. Payments are made directly to the service provider. For more details about eligibility and help with application forms please contact ICH on / or visit Carers Personal Budgets Carers Rights Day event If you are not eligible to apply to the Flexible Thanks to everyone who came to our Information Event on Friday 29 November for Carers Rights Day! More than 50 carers came and enjoyed the morning. We had informative talks from Islington Council representatives, including the Benefits Maximisation team, the Social Services Access Team and Trading Standards. An amazing 33 separate organisations and council departments who help carers, set up stalls so that carers could browse through, meet people and get the help they need to look after themselves and those they love. And, as ever, we had a very filling lunch. If you were able to come, thanks for helping to make it an excellent day, and we hope it gave you information and knowledge that you needed. If you weren t we hope to see you next year! Breaks Fund because the person you are caring for gets help from Social Services you may be able to get a Carers Personal Budget instead. This is money from the Council to pay for identified services or activities that will help to give you a break and/or support you in your caring role. Personal Budgets can be used for similar types of things as the Flexible Breaks Fund but are ongoing monthly payments rather than a one-off grant. You first need to have a Carers Assessment to see if you are eligible for a Carers Personal Budget and to see what services/activities would help you. For more information about Carers Personal Budgets and Carers Assessments contact us at. You can also find information on our website at 5

6 you do nothing, your benefit won t automatically transfer to PIP: it will stop unless you ring for a PIP. Disability Living Allowance is changing how will this affect you? You may already know that Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is being replaced for people aged 16 and over by a new benefit called Personal Independence Payment, or PIP for short. PIP will be similar to DLA in some ways: you will get it if an illness or disability means you have problems with your daily living or getting around. There are different rates depending on your level of disability, and however much you get, it won t affect your entitlement to other benefits. If getting DLA means you get extra amounts ( premiums ) on your other benefits, then a similar rate of PIP will get you the same rates of premiums as you re now getting. If you care for someone getting the daily living component of PIP (like the care component for DLA), you will have the same entitlement to Carers Allowance as you do now. There are some differences, though. Initial application will be through a phone call to the Disability and Carers Service on (if you are Deaf and have a textphone, the number is ), and they will send out a form for you to complete. After the form is completed, you may be asked to go to a centre for a medical assessment of your disability. But the biggest change is that there will be no equivalent to the low DLA care rate for the daily living component meaning that, if you currently get 21 a week for help with your daily activities (not your mobility), you may not get any money for this if/when you claim PIP. Get advice from us or another advice agency if this affects you. When will it happen? Brand-new claims for disability benefit are already being treated as PIP claims. You have to claim PIP using the phone number above. You can still claim DLA for someone aged under 16 by ringing (textphone ) and asking for a DLA in childhood claim form. If your current DLA claim runs out before 17 March 2014, make sure you make your new claim before it runs out, and you will still be claiming DLA, not PIP. However, if you have a DLA claim that comes to an end after this date, it s PIP you ll have to claim to replace it. Eventually, everyone claiming DLA will get a letter saying their benefit is going to stop, and asking them to make a brand-new claim for PIP. When you get this letter, if However, for people in London this won t happen for a while. The DWP started sending these letters to some claimants some other parts of the UK in October 2013, but claimants in London won t be affected by this until at least October One last thing: at present, if your disability gets worse or less bad and you register a change of circumstances with DLA, you re reassessed for DLA not for PIP. At some point in the future, this will change, and you will be reassessed for PIP instead. However, the Government has not yet said when this will be: we think they are waiting to see how easy or complicated it is for them to process all the new PIP claims before they make the decision as to how quickly they include changes of circumstances in PIP. We ll tell you as soon as we hear anything! Whatever happens, do not forget that Islington Carers Hub are here to advise and support you and make sure you are getting the right benefits for yourself and those you care for. Ring us on for advice and support. Carers UK calls for care leave for working carers Caring can be especially hard if you are trying to juggle work and caring commitments as 3 million of us do in this country. So Carers UK is heading up a campaign to give employees the legal right to at least five days paid care leave every year and would like to see more. It argues that, just as employees have maternity leave and sick leave, they should also be entitled to leave to care for family members without using up annual leave or, in some cases, quitting their jobs. The UK is behind the times in this area: the USA, Canada, Australia, Japan and many European countries already have such rules. Guardian Journalist Jackie Ashley cared for her husband, TV presenter Andrew Marr, when he had a stroke last year. She is spearheading the campaign. She says she knows five days isn t much, but it would allow a bit of crisis management when someone comes out of hospital, or a relative suddenly worsens. If you want to know more about the campaign, read the story on the Carers UK website at 6

7 Updates from other services Help find the right staff for Camden and Islington NHS Camden and Islington Mental Health Foundation Trust is inviting service-users and their carers onto the panels interviewing people for jobs in their hospitals. If you volunteer, you could be asked to sit on an interview panel for any of Camden and Islington s many services social care, hospital care, occupational therapy and others. If you re interested, you ll need to book onto a training session at St Pancras Hospital on Tuesday 29th April. Contact to book your place. The Alzheimer s Society has moved! Durham Road Resource Centre, 86 Durham Road, London N7 7DT T , E islington@alzheimers.org.uk, W alzheimers.org.uk The Alzheimer s Society provides free information and support to people with dementia, carers and professionals on ALL types of dementia in Islington. Carers Information and Support Programme (CrISP) This is a series of 4 workshops for people caring for a loved one with dementia. All sessions will be delivered from their office s meeting room at the Durham Road Resource Centre. The course will run on the following Fridays: 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th February 2014 from 11am 1.30pm Please call Alzheimer s Society to book your place. Other Alzheimer s Society Activities: Alzheimer s Society Carer s Support Group every 3rd Thursday of the month from 2.15pm 4.15pm at their office - Durham Road Resource Centre. Cecelia s Café every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month from 1.30pm 4.30pm at St Stephen s Church Community Centre, Canonbury Road, London N1 2DF. Singing for the Brain every Tuesday from 10.30am 12.30pm at Hargrave Hall, Hargrave Road, London N19 5SP Other Carers Groups in Islington Islington Mind Dual Diagnosis Carers Support Group For carers supporting someone with both mental health difficulties and a drug or alcohol problem. Tuesdays 18 Feb, 25 March and 20 May am 1.30 pm. Upper Holloway Baptist Church, 11 Tollington Way, N7 6GR. Contact Jill Keegan on or jill.keegan@islingtonmind.org.uk Archway District & Carers Group Open to all carers of all ages. This group meets most Wednesdays, from 2-4pm at New Orleans Hall, Cromartie Road, N19 3TH. Please contact Kirsty Mabb on for more information. Voice for change A group for patients, carers, relatives or friends who are affected by a life-limiting serious illness. Meets the first Thursday of the month 10 12pm at Bingfield Street Surgery, N1 0AL. For info please contact Rachael Yearwood Macmillan Information Specialist on or ; r.yearwood@stjh.org.uk DAAFFII Drug and Alcohol Affected Friends and Families in Islington Weekly social group. Mondays 6-8pm 332C Goswell Rd, EC1V 7LQ Phone or text Sue Piper on See also EAGLE Recovery Project. Mind Yourself Irish Carers Group Varied weekly sessions for Irish carers. Mind Yourself or info@mind-yourself.co.uk South Islington Stroke Club A friendly lunch club for people who have had a stroke and their carers. Thursdays at pm to St Mary s Community Centre, Upper Street. Contact Sally Turner on Centre 404 Carers Coffee Mornings Third Tuesday of the month 10am. Contact Pat Costa on Visit for details. 7

8 DATES FOR YOUR DIARY For information about our weekly advice sessions please see page 2. The following listings are for events, more details can be found inside. For information about groups run by other organisations please see page 7 or visit Please note that dates can sometimes change so we recommend that you call the group organiser before coming. February rd 4th 12th 13th 17th 18th 24th 25th 26th 28th March rd 4th 11th 12th 25th 26th 28th 31st St Luke s Over 50s Carers Group Carers Providers Forum Improve your Balance Workshop Carers Pathway Group Drovers Older Carers Support Group Young Adult Carers Group BME Carers Group St Luke s Over 50s Carers Group FREE Moving & Handling Techniques Workshop Young Adult Carers Group BME Carers Group Drovers Older Carers Support Group April st 7th 9th 15th 23rd 25th 28th 29th May th 6th 14th 15th 26th 27th 28th 30th St Luke s Over 50s Carers Group Carers Pathway Group BME Carers Group Drovers Older Carers Support Group Young Adult Carers Group St Luke s Over 50s Carers Group Carers Providers Forum Drovers Older Carers Support Group Young Adult Carers Group BME Carers Group The next issue of Carers News will be out in May If you have a news story or event for carers please contact nathan.lechler@islingtoncarershub.org or call the Hub on or FREE Mental Health Awareness Training for carers. March-April See page 4 for details. Contact us at : Tel: or info@islingtoncarershub.org Visit Carers UK is a charity registered in England and Wales (246329) and in Scotland (SC039307) and a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (864097) Registered office: 20 Great Dover Street, London SE1 4LX is run by CARERS UK the voice of carers 8