New Carer’s Act for Scotland launched

The act applies to both adult and young carers and aims to support carers’ health and wellbeing and help make caring more sustainable. Overall, the goal is to deliver improved:

The definition of a carer is being broadened to mean any individual who provides or intends to provide care for another individual. This will include anyone who provides unpaid support to family or friends who could not manage without this help e.g. caring for a relative, partner or friend who is ill, frail, disabled or has mental health or substance misuse problems.

The current carer assessment is being replaced with carer support plans for adults and a young carers statement for young carers. These will act as a gateway to various types of support, including statutory services, emotional support, training, advice, information, access to short breaks, benefits advice and signposting to other services.

New eligibility criteria are being introduced that will identify the carers that councils will be required to support. The carer support plan will identify other ways that carers can be enabled to carrying out their caring role.

Carers will also have the right to be involved in the development of local strategies and services that affect their caring role.

Dr Stephen Mather, chair of the Scottish Borders Integration Joint Board, said: “Improving support for unpaid carers is also one of the key priorities of the recently approved Health and Social Care Locality Plans, with each of the five plans setting out our commitment to ensuring that an adult carers support plan, young carers statement and eligibility criteria are in place. A short breaks statement containing both local and national information is also being developed and we are working towards having an adult Carers Strategy in place by April 2019.”