Carer Involvement started off as a national CQUIN in 2016/17. Carer Involvement is an area that is important to develop and prioritise for services as it is continues to bring many challenges for services to do this well. There are often concerns around confidentiality and consent from service users when considering how best to involve carers, and this should not be a barrier to effective carer involvement and engagement. These standards around carer involvement aim to provide clear information about how carers can be engaged with, supported, involved and empowered.
When we refer here to Carer involvement we are referring to Families, Friends and Carers, and have chosen to use the term Carer to be inclusive to these parties as it is a term that is used in the majority of literature including within the nationally developed Carers Toolkit. The Carers Toolkit could be used alongside this effectively, and can be found on the website under Network Resources