Carers - What is a carer?

Carers are people who help look after others, providing care or essential support to people who are unable to do everything for themselves.

Carers may be relatives of the person for whom they care or they might be a friend or neighbour. They may or may not live with the person they help look after. The amount of support a carer provides will also vary.   

Cumbria County Council is committed to supporting carers and recognises that most care in the community takes place through family, friends and neighbours.   

Two recent Acts – the Carers (Recognition and Services) Act 1995 and the Carers and Disabled Children Act 2000 - tell local authorities like us how we should provide support to carers.   

The Carers (Recognition and Services) Act 1995 says:   

"A carer is entitled, on request, to an assessment when a local authority carries out an assessment of the person being cared for in respect of Community Care services or services for children. The carers assessment should be taken into account when the local authority is making decisions about services to be arranged for the user."   

The Carers and Disabled Children Act 2000 adds to this in three ways:   

• carers looking after adults can have an assessment, even if the person they look after refuses to have an assessment (note that parents and carers of disabled children can only have an assessment as part of an assessment of need of the child(ren) they look after); 
• local authorities are able to provide services directly to carers and these services can be flexible to provide carers with the outcome they would like to see; and 
• local authorities can provide carers who have been assessed as needing services, with direct payments to enable them to arrange their own services as an alternative to having services arranged for them by a social worker.