Carers Plus Yorkshire is delighted to announce that it has been awarded the Excellence for Carers Award!
Excellence for Carers is the Carers Trust organisational standard for best practice in delivering services, information and advice to unpaid carers. It is awarded to partner charities (‘Network Partners’) within the Carers Trust Network able to demonstrate both an existing excellence of service to unpaid carers and a culture that fosters continuous improvement and striving for excellence. Carers Trust developed the award so charities within its Network are continually evaluating and improving the quality of services, thereby improving the quality of life for unpaid carers across the UK.
The award follows a rigorous assessment of Carers Plus Yorkshire’s services to unpaid carers, as well as the quality of its leadership, staff, internal processes and engagement with key local partners and stakeholders.
Charities achieving the Carers Trust standard must demonstrate quality of service to unpaid carers across ten key areas:
· Outcomes and impact
· Carer identification
· Carer need
· Information, advice and support
· Sign-posting and navigation to sources of support and information
· Peer support, emotional support and carers education
· Working with, and on behalf of carers; formal and informal advocacy
· Technology and digital
· Partnerships, influence and sustainability
· Carer involvement
In making the award, Carers Trust said in its report that “Carers Plus Yorkshire demonstrates a commitment and passion to its mission to identify and support unpaid carers, from the CEO, senior team and Board through to frontline Advisers and volunteers.”
Carers Trust also noted in its report the commitment of Carers Plus Yorkshire, having achieved the award, to carry on making improvements, citing: “a clear signal to embed quality improvement through the introduction of the Quality Assurance Lead role”.
As well as signalling the quality of its services for unpaid carers, the Carers Plus Yorkshire award means its partners, and stakeholders commissioning services from the charity, can be confident they are partnering with an organisation that has best practice hard-wired into its organisational DNA.
Welcoming the award, Chief Executive Officer at Carers Plus Yorkshire, Elizabeth McPherson, said:
“This award really matters to everyone at Carers Plus Yorkshire. We’ve always known that we are passionate about what we do, and we take great pride in that. But we owe it to unpaid carers to be more than just passionate. That’s what this award does. It tells us, and the unpaid carers we work with, that we are specialists offering specialist services. But we owe it to carers not to rest on our laurels now. This is just the beginning for us. We will continue to listen to clients and colleagues, and work to continually to make sure our service is meeting the needs of carers across our patch”
Perry Marshall, Network Development Manager at Carers Trust, continued:
“It was obvious to us that everyone across the Carers Plus Yorkshire team, from the Board to the Senior Team, staff and volunteers had bought into developing a culture of excellence. They have achieved all this while still working flat out to help carers cope with the terrible impact of lockdown and shielding. I am thrilled that the team have worked so hard to come this far and am really looking forward to seeing their services continue to excel.”