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Carers Week 2020 round up

Carers Week is an annual campaign to raise awareness of caring, highlight the challenges unpaid carers face and recognise the contribution they make to families and communities throughout the UK. It also helps people who don't think of themselves as having caring responsibilities to identify as carers and access much-needed support.

This year, carers are facing new challenges and increased caring responsibilities for their friends and family who need to be looked after, or are in need of extra support, due to coronavirus. We wanted to recognise them for the difficulties they are experiencing, show our respect and appreciation for all they are doing, and share some of our useful resources.

Celebrating carers across the UK

We wanted to let carers in our volunteer team, as well as the wider MS community, know that we’re here to support them. So we used our social media channels to promote some of the great services that are available to them, such as the connection services within our ‘Never Alone’ campaign. Our new Helpline MS Nurse took over our Facebook and Twitter accounts for a day to answer questions about caring for someone with MS, and the rights of carers.

We also shared lots of useful resources across our external channels, including stories of carers in the MS community. We celebrated their contribution but also highlighted the emotional and financial pressures they can face.

And we blogged on our website about how we support carers, and the influencing work we’re doing to call on the Government to improve support for them - focussing on four key areas:

  1. Increasing Carer's Allowance
  2. Greater recognition of the role of unpaid carers
  3. Reinstating care and support services for carers (new coronavirus legislation in England and Wales means care has been reduced in some areas)
  4. PPE and testing to be accessible, and PPE affordable, for unpaid carers

We’ll also be teaming up with Carers UK by signing a joint letter to Therese Coffey, Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, calling for an increase in Carer's Allowance.