ACE National

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ACE National

• Action for Carers and Employment

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Who are our beneficiaries?

• Carers look after family, partners or friends in
  need of help because they are ill, frail or have
  a disability. The care they provide is unpaid
• Carers are not
• people looking after children who do not have a
  disability or life-limiting illness
• people who work in care - careworkers, medical
  staff, community workers, volunteers

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Key project objectives

• To raise awareness in the widest possible forum
  of the issues facing carers who want to work
• To develop and test the mechanisms that can
  support carers to return to, or remain in, work
• To mainstream support and have the greatest
  possible impact on local and national policy on
  carers and work

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Project design

• National lead partner - Carers UK
• Six local demonstration sites, four in England,
  two in Wales, working directly with beneficiaries
• A national policy partnership, designed to
  achieve maximum mainstreaming and long-term
  policy change
• A well-resourced central management structure
  (with specialist support) plus locally managed
  sites

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Preparation for the bid

• Pre- Action 1
• engaged specialist support (EISS)
• workshops to identify local and national partners
  and float the project design
• Action 1
• survey of carers needs in all local sites
• research review to build the evidence base
• workshops to consolidate project design,
  management structure, workplan
• consultation re whole partnership strategies

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Preparation - key successes

• Specialist advice on application process and
  systems management from the outset
• Early identification of project partners and
  clearly defined project activities and policy
  aims
• Strong evidence base
• Clearly defined management structures and
  monitoring systems from the outset

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Preparation - key challenges

• Getting buy-in to Equal and its requirements
• (including explaining the mysteries and miseries
  of match funding thank heaven for EISS!)
• Getting information promptly and in the required
  format
• Keeping the message fresh in the face of ESF
  bureaucracy you have to believe in what you are
  doing and keep everyone else believing in it too!

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Conditions for mainstreaming 1

• Lead partner (Carers UK) with a successful track
  record in lobbying and campaigning
• Key local partners with influence
• Local authorities, Information, Advice and
  Guidance networks, Jobcentre Plus, employers
• Research community
• Centre for Social Inclusion, Sheffield Hallam
  University

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Conditions for mainstreaming 2

• Key national partners with influence
• City Guilds
• Employers for Carers
• BT, BITC, CBI, Centrica, DCA, HSBC, Listawood,
  Metropolitan Police, Nestor Healthcare, NHS,
  PricewaterhouseCoopers
• Government departments
• DoH, DTi, DWP, Jobcentre Plus
• Equal Opportunities Commission
• Unions

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Key outcomes 1

• Carers (Equal Opportunity) Act 2004
• Learning for Living
• Employers for Carers website
• Government commitment re extending the right to
  request flexible working to carers
• Parents and Carers Coalition A Case for
  Change
• EOC General Formal Investigation into part-time
  and flexible working

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Key outcomes 2

• Research report - The Social and Business
  Benefits of Supporting Carers in the Workplace
• Training resources for
• local authorities
• employers
• unions
• Jobcentre Plus