Carers Week 7-13th June 2021

Today starts the beginning of Carers Week across the UK.  Gower College Swansea, along with organisations such as Carers Trust and Carers UK, are celebrating and raising awareness of the role of the carer within our community.

A carer is anyone who provides unpaid care for a family member, friend or partner who has a health condition, mental health condition, disability or alcohol/substance addiction. A carer can be any age and from any background. It can be a temporary role or a lifelong commitment. Many carers don’t tell people about their caring role so they remain unseen and don’t always have access to support available to them. We would like to change that and make carers feel comfortable in declaring their role to others.

There are many carers and young adult carers (carers aged between 16 and 25) studying in Gower College Swansea, who have to juggle college commitments with their caring role. We are aware this can be a struggle at times and so we have put in place a support system for carers, whether it be pastoral support with the Student Support Officer team or help in accessing professional carer support with local carers’ agencies.

Gower College Swansea has been awarded the Carers Federation Quality Mark for our awareness and support of Carers. We also have two designated Student Support Officers (Tamsyn Oates and Ryan McCarley) who lead the support for Carers and Young Adult Carers across all campuses.

If you are a carer/young adult carer or you know a carer/young adult carer and you would like to find out what support is available, here are some useful links for the Swansea and surrounding areas:

Gower College Designated Young Adult Carer Support Officers –  Tamsyn.Oates@gcs.ac.uk  and Ryan.McCarley@gcs.ac.uk

Swansea Carers Centre – 01792 653344 or admin@swanseacarerscentre.org.uk

Swansea Carers Centre Young Adult Carer Project – 01792 653344 or alex@swanseacarerscentre.org.uk

Carmarthenshire Carers Trust – http://carmarthenshirecarers.org.uk​

Neath Port Talbot Carers – http://nptcarers.org.uk/1107

Neath Port Talbot Young Carers – http://www.nptcarers.org.uk/1346

Carers Trust – https://carers.org/

Carers Week campaign – http://www.carersweek.org