At The Carers Centre, the voice of the carer is at the heart of everything we do. Feedback is vital to our organisation and we’re always asking carers for their opinions on our service. As well as giving carers the chance to get their voice heard within the Carers’ Centre (which helps us shape future services) we also want to get the voice of carers heard within their local communities.

Thanks to some funding from Comic Relief, we are now able to set up a Carer Voice group which will meet every three months, at our Bath and Radstock centres. Our CEO and project leader Sonia Hutchison says it’s great that “carers can get together to influence the Carers’ Centre and local services”.

Yesterday was the first of these Carer Voice groups, meeting at Radstock in the morning and Bath in the evening. I attended these meetings for about half an hour to conduct a group interview for my support group project, asking carers what they would like the Carers’ Centre to offer them. It was a great opportunity to talk about the project and I gained some fantastic ideas from the carers.

What struck me most was the atmosphere of the group; that these carers were not seeking to complain about services, but instead wanted to give constructive feedback on how we could be even better. It’s great to have the chance to speak to them about what they want, and all we can do is try and implement their ideas as best we can.