The Summer EfC networking event shared its theme with this year\u2019s Carers Week, \u2018Making Caring Visible and Valued\u2019, and gave members the opportunity to discuss issues and activities related to the annual campaign. The event was held virtually on 23 June 2021 and saw a wonderfully high turn-out across members from all sectors.<\/p>\n
The event was once again opened and chaired by Nick Baird, Chair of Carers UK. He noted that a key challenge for us all as employers is ensuring that we communicate clearly and regularly about caring – and help available in the workplace – to encourage carers to make themselves visible and managers to value and support them. This has been the most successful Carers Week ever in terms of the number of events held by\u00a0EfC, and by\u00a0EfC\u00a0members, and the numbers of people engaged in those events.<\/p>\n
Four member organisations provided updates on what they have been doing to make caring visible and valued across Carers Week and beyond. Lee Innes, who co-chairs the Carers Community at Aviva, spoke about the\u00a0importance of introducing and cultivating a celebratory element across the community as well as considering ways to support customers as well as internal staff. Tracy Orlandi, Staff and Wellbeing Lead at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, shared a wellness roadmap which weaves carers into every event, recognising that someone who wasn\u2019t a carer last week may well be one today.<\/p>\n
Ling Kong and Tanisha Valton, who work in the HR department at\u00a0Publicis Sapient,\u00a0helpfully\u00a0shared their personal experiences of caring with the group.\u00a0Some\u00a0very\u00a0positive events were hosted internally across Carers Week, including a session during which employees were able to talk freely and openly about the issue of caring, and the\u00a0EfC\u00a0team were thanked for presenting at a lunch and learn. Our last member speaker was Hannah Usher, Carers Lead at PwC, who noted that the network had grown massively in the last 18 months. She stressed the importance of responding to what staff want and need, and\u00a0highlighted\u00a0a general cultural shift\u00a0to flexible working, in terms of both where and when.<\/p>\n
Helen Walker, Chief Executive of Carers UK, provided an organisational update. Last month Carers UK was delighted to launch our Carer Friendly Company report which was supported by British Gas. This included a Carer Friendly Company blueprint to help public and private companies support millions of their customers who have caring responsibilities for someone who is older, disabled or seriously ill. Carers Week also saw the launch of our research, Breaks not breakdown, showing that 72% of carers have not had any breaks from their caring role during the pandemic. Strikingly, it also revealed that 55% of working carers felt overwhelmed by their caring responsibilities.<\/p>\n
A\u00a0Q&A session with all participants followed, with some interesting points raised and top tips shared.\u00a0Members discussed the need to dispel the myth that you have to be related to someone to be their carer. The importance of celebrating different types of caring and carers was emphasised across the board.<\/p>\n
The session was wrapped up by Nick Baird, who thanked\u00a0our fantastic\u00a0speakers for\u00a0being so open, generous and informative.\u00a0He also highlighted\u00a0that\u00a0Carers UK will be conducting a research survey of\u00a0EfC\u00a0members shortly to help understand the impact of the pandemic on working carers and how members have been supporting them\u00a0–\u00a0further news\u00a0to follow\u00a0shortly!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Summer EfC networking event shared its theme with this year\u2019s Carers Week, \u2018Making Caring Visible and Valued\u2019, and gave members the opportunity to discuss issues and activities related to the annual campaign. The event was held virtually on 23 June 2021 and saw a wonderfully high turn-out across members from all sectors. The event […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20857,"featured_media":9395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20857"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}