Time to care

Cairdeas is operated by Penumbra Respite Care, a major Scottish mental health charity, and offers residential respite care as planned breaks for people with a wide range of mental ill health. It gives them short supported breaks away from their home environment to help them over difficult times and to give carers a break. The service is like a guest house, but has skilled staff working on a 24-hour basis and provides social outings like going to the cinema. Yet, despite having only 8 beds and being able to offer 400 respite weeks a year for the whole of Scotland, Cairdeas is often under-used by local authorities, despite an apparent desperate need among carers of adults with mental health problems. The project director, Be Morris, argues that this is because respite is still seen as an add-on extra, that mental health carers are often hidden, and that these carers are missing out on assessments of their need. Statistics have shown that 40% of carers in Scotland have not had an overnight break in the last 2 years.