Carer Friendly GP’s all over Dorset!
Did you know we are supporting GP Surgeries to join our Carer Friendly Community?
We are very fortunate to have NHS Carers Engagement Facilitators that are dedicated to supporting GP surgeries to provide exceptional care and support to unpaid carers within their practice and local community. To support their work, we formed a partnership with the facilitators to award our Carer Friendly Recognition to those practices that meet their bench marker of good practice. This good practice is in part; based on a piece of work between the NHS and Carers UK, who created a NHS bench mark guidance around identifying and supporting the Carers.
Five PCN and Practice groups have been awarded so far!
Congratulations to all the staff at Jurassic PCN 🎉Jurassic Coast PCN
Gillingham Medical Practice🎉Gillingham Medical Practice (gillinghamsurgery.co.uk)
Poole north PCN 🎉Poole North PCN | Poole | Facebook
The Adams Practice🎉 The Adam Practice – Medical Doctors in Dorset
Mid Dorset PCN 🎉 Mid Dorset Primary Care Network (mid-dorsetpcn.co.uk)
Between them that is 26 GP sites so far around Dorset and BCP.
Here is why is their own words:
Poole North PCN comprises four Practices in the local area and has a designated Carers Lead assigned to each Practice. We work as part of a friendly proactive team of Care Coordinators, meeting regularly to share ideas and plan events to support carers.
This summer we arranged a ‘Cake for Carers’ afternoon, which we hosted in Broadstone during Carers Week, and represented our PCN at a local Dementia Awareness event. These were well attended and the feedback we received was positive, which will help us to plan future events.
We are constantly looking at ways to develop our links with more carers in the local area, by listening to what support carers would like from their GP Practice, raising awareness of our social media pages, promoting events on Practice carers noticeboards and monitor displays in reception areas, and reaching out to local charities and schools to the wider carer’s community.
At Gillingham Medical Practice, we work hard to support our carers and give recognition to the invaluable support they provide. Claire Lockett is our carers lead, as well as a Social Prescriber within the practice. Claire has a wealth of knowledge about support and services in the local area. Claire is supported by Emily Nott, our Lead Care Coordinator. Emily registers carers and ensures coding is correct. We keep in regular contact with our carers through text message with information about upcoming events, whether these are organised by the practice or externally.
We also have Karen Johnson, our Families and Young Person Social Prescriber, who we link in with when thinking about how we can offer support to our young carers. In collaboration with Dorset Council, we run a fortnightly carers group at the library where carers can come together and talk to others who are dealing with similar situations. We have previously run a Carers Education Course too which focused on a different topic each session.
We have previously held a free cream tea afternoon to celebrate carers week. This event was enjoyable for all, and 40 carers attended. We also run a Wellbeing One Stop clinic every 3 weeks at the library. This clinic is mainly aimed at our frail population, but we do make sure to include carers and the clinic gives the patient a ‘full MOT’ and they see multiple healthcare professionals in one visit. Carer Support Dorset have previously attended a clinic which proved to be beneficial. We hope this will give them some extra support. We have also recently started running clinics for annual carers health checks. These currently occur once a month. Patients will see an HCA, and Claire who will conduct a full carer assessment. We are always thinking of ideas of how we can better our support for carers.