Age UK’s Campaigns Team have put together a resource pack for this year’s Carers Week. Find out how you can get involved.
Carers Week will run from 7 – 11 June 2021. It’s an annual campaign to raise awareness of caring, highlight the challenges unpaid carers face and pave the way for policy makers to provide greater support for carers in the long term. We’ve put together a pack of resources for you to start getting involved now. Read on to find out more.
The last year has been incredibly difficult for carers and it’s clear to all of us that they deserve more recognition and better support. Carers Week is a great chance for us to come together and make that case so please do get involved. This year will focus particularly on respite for carers, and we’ll be calling for the Government to provide much needed respite funding. The week is also a good opportunity to promote the fantastic services many of you offer to support carers in your area.
There are lots of ways you can get involved, both now and in the week itself. The Friday in particular will be dedicated to older carers, so we’ve put together a letter to the editor and some social media content for use on that day. Find more detail below:
What can you do now?
If you have 5 minutes:
Pledge your support for carers on the Carers Week website.
If you have half a day:
Organise an activity to take place during Carers Week to make carers feel visible and valued. For instance, you might hold an online coffee morning. You can find ideas for different activities in this guide.
If you are organising an activity, please list it on the Carers Week website here and let us know. If you already hold this type of event as part of your regular programming, please do list it.
What can you do during Carers Week?
In the week itself, we’d love you to get involved by writing to your local paper and posting about Carers Week on your social media. We’ve put together the following resources and templates if you’d like to use them.
Letter to the editor
Placing a piece in your local paper about Carers Week is a great way to raise awareness for carers. We know MPs read their local papers, so this is a chance to get carers on their agenda too, whilst raising your own profile as a local charity.
We’ve drafted a template letter to the editor using our latest research on older carers for you to send to your local paper. Please note that it is embargoed until 00:01 Friday 11th June, so please leave the embargo on the letter when you send it and make sure the paper is aware.
You can download the letter here.
Social media templates
Carers Week is a great time to share your resources for carers, highlight your services and promote the voices of carers on your social media channels.
If you’d like template posts for your Twitter and Facebook channels during the week, you can download some here.
To go alongside your posts, we’ve put together some creatives and graphics, which you can download here. We have also made graphics using our latest statistics on older carers, which will be embargoed until 00:01 Friday 11th June. You can download these here, but please do not share them before this date.
You can also share the official Carers Week graphics, which you can find here.
Breaks campaign
The Carers Week breaks campaign will be launching on Wednesday 12th May.
The campaign calls on the UK government to increase funding for carers’ breaks by £1.2 billion, through an additional £50/week paid directly to carers. An action will be added to the Carers Week website so please keep an eye out.
We’ll be in touch with more information and resources when we receive them from Carers UK.
If you have any other questions about the actions listed above or would like support getting involved, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can email me at Rhianon.Steeds@ageuk.org.uk.