The ALLIANCE Carer Voices project review activities from 2020

Carer Voices delivered 130 digital Intelligent Kindness sessions, held a wellbeing campaign and shared work at virtual conferences.

2020 was a turning point for all including the Carer Voices project.

Despite the pandemic, the project adapted to digital delivery and reached an incredible 7,500 people over the course of 130 talks comprising of students and professionals in the public, third and health and social care sectors.

Engaging with people is the golden thread that runs through all Carer Voices activity whether face-to-face or digital. Many of our highlights in 2020 focused on promoting wellbeing against the context of the pandemic through our Keep Well with Carer Voices campaign. This included partnership activity with NHS Lothian and creative activities demonstrating that kindness has prevailed in uncertain times.

We also published the Dementia Carer Voices Impact Report – It’s all about people and relationships showcasing the project’s key achievements across policy, outreach, rights and people over the past seven years.

The principles of ‘What Matters to You?’ have remained at the heart of our project. This was highlighted in our participation in the ALLIANCE Annual Conference Week 2020 in two webinars ‘Reimagining the future of health and care with a what matters to you conversation’ in partnership with international colleagues from Brazil, England, Norway, Scotland and United States of America and ‘Economic recovery and the impact on health inequalities – an international perspectives’ with colleagues from Scottish Parliament and Europe. And leading on from the success of last year’s Concert for Caring we welcomed back Glasgow’s very own Hipsway to close a week of insightful events.

We also participated in two virtual conferences – the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare in Copenhagen and the IHI Congress 2020 in Florida. These events affirmed that storytelling is powerful and right at the heart of what we need to do to reform health and social care in the 21st century.

We held 5 Conversation events with the People of Scotland in partnership with Healthcare Improvement Scotland reaching over 200 people as a part of the People at the Centre programme.

The project remained committed to building stronger partnerships with cross-sectoral colleagues. We widened our outreach to the third and public sectors reaching over 300 people at Social Security Scotland, Arc Scotland and Penumbra. Key messages from the Chief Nursing Officer for Scotland Professor Fiona McQueen and the ‘What Matters to You’ approach were shared at each Intelligent Kindness session.

We maintained representation on a number of national third sector discussion groups and Parliamentary Groups, attending: Cross-Party Groups on Dementia and Carers, the ‘What Matters to You?’ steering group, the Focus on Dementia Group, the Dementia in Care Homes Group and the Social Security Scotland Inclusive Communications Stakeholder Reference Group.

We continued to extend this conversation across different mediums by publishing 12 newsletters and hosting several opinion pieces and ALLIANCE Live podcasts and webinars.

This wide range of work will expand as our project amplifies messages of Intelligent Kindness and launches Carers Conversation Cafes in 2021. Keep an eye on what Carer Voices get up to next year on the ALLIANCE website.

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