Supporting Carers
The council recognises that an increasing number of employees have long term caring responsibilities which place daily demands on their time, energy and resources.
In order to ensure that the skills and experience of our valued employees is retained, a number of resources and provisions are available internally and externally to support employees to manage the demands of their caring responsibilities while continuing in employment.
Who is a Carer?
A carer is a person of any age who provides unpaid care and support to a dependant who is affected by frailty, long-term illness or disability and could not manage without this help.
The dependant could be a spouse, partner, civil-partner, parent, grandparent, child or anyone who is dependent on the employee for day to day care. The dependant does not have to be a family member.
Telling the Council that you are a Carer
To ensure that council provisions appropriately meet the needs of carers it is helpful to know how many of our employees provide unpaid care to a dependant and where they work.
You can tell the council about your status as an unpaid carer by adding this to your profile on MyHR. The information held is kept strictly confidential and can only be accessed by your line manager and HR officers. The council reports on the number of carers employed every two years in our Equality Monitoring Report, but this information is always anonymised.
Follow the steps below to add this information to your MyHR profile:
- Log in to MyHR;
- Click on the View Profile tab on the left of the page (the little face);
- Click on Sensitive Information;
- Add your carer status at the bottom of the page, along with the type of dependant you provide care to.
You can change this information at any time if your status as an unpaid carer changes.
Resources/Provisions
Click on the tabs below to get more information on internal provisions and support available to carers and additional sources of local support and advice:
