Great britain. department of health

This circular provides information on the administration of the 2010-11 allocation for local authorities taking part in the Carers Strategy Demonstrator Sites (CSDS) project. The CSDS project is a Department of Health initiative to look at ways of providing new approaches to offering breaks for carers, health checks for carers and better NHS support for carers. Plans for demonstrator sites were set out in the Carers Strategy “Carers at the heart of 21st-Century families and communities: A caring system on your side. A life of your own”.

Co-production is one of four elements which define successful change. The additional elements are defined as subsidiarity, leadership and system alignment1 . It is clear that engagement of people who use services, carers, families and citizens needs to be a core element of all four change principles for genuine and sustainable change to be achieved. This document provides a brief overview of the different approaches to co-production and acknowledges the individual voices and approaches which exist in the co-production sphere.

The carers' strategy sets out the Government's short-term agenda and long-term vision for the future care and support of carers The carers' strategy is underpinned by £255 million to implement some immediate steps alongside with medium and long-term plans. New commitments in the carers’ strategy include: £150 million towards planned short breaks for carers; £38 million towards supporting carers to enter or re-enter the job market and £6 million towards improving support for young carers.

Direct payments, which allow users to arrange their own care and services instead of receiving them directly from  local councils, can be made to parents and carers aged 16 or over. This includes people with parental responsibility for a disabled child. This guide offers advice to people who are thinking about or who are already getting direct payments from their local council social services department.

The Carers in the Region profiles have been commissioned by the Department of Health to provide information about carers at the regional level for each of the 9 English regions. These profiles include data on the number and characteristics of carers in each region as well as information about carer health and well-being. This profile provides information covering the East of England region. In 2001 there were 517,877 carers in the East of England region, which is 10% of the region’s population.

This report argues that intermediate care, a range of services to promote faster recovery from illness, prevent faster recovery from illness, reduce hospital admissions and to maximise independence, is vital to improve the health and well being of older people. The national service framework for older people is a ten year programme of action linking services to support independence and promote good health, specialised services for key conditions, and culture change so that all older people and their carers are always treated with respect, dignity and fairness.

This booklet provides some background information about dementia, its causes and symptoms, and gives practical advice on how to help someone with dementia, especially in the early stages. Information on support services and useful organisations are also provided.

This guidance is aimed at care trust and local authority chief executives, directors of adult and children's social services and communication leads and is intended to assist councils with social services responsibilities in making direct payments. It applies to children's and adult services and replaces the 2003 guidance, and reflects legislative changes that extend direct payments to previously excluded groups.

This a template action plan can be used by local authorities and commissioning consortia working together under Health and Well-being Boards to improve care for those people with dementia who live in their own homes or in some other residential setting.

In July 2008 the Department of Health published the End of Life Care Strategy - promoting high quality care for all adults at the end of life. This second annual report sets out the continuing progress in implementing the strategy, highlights the need for further work and identifies the action intended for this coming year. The report details the progress made in improving standards of end of life care in England over the past year.