Our commitment to Carers

In the UK, around 12,000 people become unpaid carers every day and in Surrey we recognise that unpaid carers hold families together and often fill the gaps statutory services are unable to provide. We want Surrey to be a place where unpaid carers are recognised, valued and supported in their caring role and as an individual.

In Surrey, we want to make sure people who look after someone — called carers, get the help they need. We have a plan with six main goals. These include giving carers good support services, making sure carers know their rights, helping more carers be seen and recognised, listening to carers’ ideas, supporting carers who also have jobs, and making information easy to understand.

There is also a plan for young carers — children and teenagers who look after someone at home. The goals for young carers include helping adults spot when a young person is a carer, making sure young carers get the right assessments, helping families feel safe to ask for support, giving young carers services that fit their needs, supporting their mental health, and keeping them safe.

Surrey Carers strategies update

The Surrey Joint Carers Strategy 2021-2026 was co-produced with unpaid carers and key stakeholders and published in September 2021.  It set out six priorities:

  1. Commissioning high quality services, 
  2. Increasing visibility of carers, 
  3. Promoting carers rights, 
  4. Supporting working carers, 
  5. Strengthening carer voice, and 
  6. Improving communication and engagement.

In February 2023, the Surrey Joint Strategy for Young Carers 2022-2026 was launched, developed with young carers, young adult carers, parent carers and partners.  Its priorities focused on visibility, rights, self-identification, access to appropriate services, emotional wellbeing, and safeguarding.

Both strategies were reviewed in early 2024, and an extension was agreed to allow for further delivery on commitments.  Over the past four years, significant progress has been made, but we recognise there is still more to do.  In 2025, major reorganisations across the health and care system were announced, which will affect delivery of some priorities and delay plans for an all-age carers strategy originally scheduled for 2027.

What we have achieved

The carers teams across Surrey County Council and NHS Surrey Heartlands ICB have worked hard to deliver on commitments to improve the lives of unpaid carers of all ages.  A summary of key achievements is below.

Commissioning and services

  • Procurement of nine prevention and wellbeing services for unpaid carers in April 2022, including an independent Giving Carers a Voice service.
  • Two new pilot services launched for carers of people with mental health needs, supporting more than 880 carers in Surrey.
  • Introduction of the Carer Wellbeing Breaks payment scheme, giving carers full choice and control over how they take a break. More than 300 carers have benefited since June 2025.

Innovation and pilots

  • Innovation fund made available for two consecutive years, supporting pilots for carers breaks, better identification, income maximisation, young carer voice, equality training, and specialist family support.  Learning from these pilots shaped commissioning, extended the Giving Carers a Voice service to all ages, and informed the new Income Maximisation Service. The income maximisation tender is designed to help unpaid carers access financial support and welfare benefits they are entitled to, improving financial stability, reducing debt and helping to prevent poverty.

Health and wellbeing

  • Promotion of the annual free flu vaccine for unpaid carers, continuing to encourage uptake during flu season.
  • Continued to embed carer-friendly practice in GP practices.  The number of unpaid carers registered increased from 35,010 in October 2024 to 45,106 in October 2025.

All‑Age Carers outcome framework

  • Co‑produced with Surrey County Council, NHS partners, carers (via Luminus), and providers to ensure the carer voice is central to service design.
  • Experiences from 2,400 carers shaped the “I wish…” statements, refined into outcomes across four themes: teamwork and communication, knowledge, access to services, and carer health and wellbeing.
  • Providers developed service‑level outcomes and measures, with the Young Carers Covenant embedded to ensure an all‑age approach.
  • All outcomes align with the Surrey County Council Health & Wellbeing Strategy, ensuring future commissioned services collectively strengthen the wellbeing of unpaid carers in Surrey.

Hospital discharge support

  • South East Carers and Hospital Discharge Toolkit piloted in three acute hospital trusts, seeking to improve experience of unpaid carers from admission through to discharge.

Workforce development

  • Staff Carers Networks established in both Surrey County Council and NHS Surrey Heartlands, providing safe spaces for working carers to access advice, signposting and to be involved in development of policies.
  • Achieved the Employers for Carers, Carer Confident Level Two, Accomplished status in September 2023, becoming the first system in the UK to achieve this jointly.  This accreditation demonstrates the commitment to enhancing workplace culture and improving the support available to staff who are unpaid carers.
  • Launch of ‘Our Shoes Young Carers’ training module for Surrey professionals in October 2024, co-designed and facilitated by young adult carers.
  • Young Carer Practice Guidance and Early Intervention Payment guidance published, expanding eligibility to Early Help practitioners.
  • Carers Practice Skill and Induction training launched for adult social care staff, ensuring consistent best practice.
  • Mandatory carers e-learning introduced for all front line adult social care staff to reinforce statutory responsibilities.
  • Young carers training for adult social care practitioners to improve identification and supportive conversations with children in caring roles.

Digital innovation

  • AI powered chatbot introduced on the Surrey County Council website to provide instant guidance and personalised triage.
  • Accelerating Reform Funding secured, partnering with a digital provider to expand online outreach: 20,000 carers identified, with 8,000 engaged and supported though online courses and tailored one to one support.
  • Bench marking carer support approaches to inform new digitally enabled pathways for social services.

Strategic development

  • Embedding an all‑age approach across the Outcomes Framework, Market Position Statement and Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) to strengthen continuity and inclusivity throughout the carer journey.
  • Developed an all-age JSNA chapter with Luminus, incorporating carers’ views into the unpaid carers chapter. Analysis of more than 2,400 carer experiences, tested through 21 events with 186 carers, identified four key themes:
    • Knowledge and understanding
    • Emotional wellbeing
    • Caring/life balance
    • Signposting and information.
  • Age specific insights highlighted challenges such as early identification, tailored, support, transition to adulthood, recognition by professionals, access to statutory help and wellbeing impacts.

Future plans

Looking ahead, Surrey County Council and the NHS in Surrey remain committed to supporting unpaid carers.  The recommendations from the JSNA will be shared with carers and stakeholders and will be used to refresh commitments during the transition period of local government and NHS reorganisations, as well as shape the development of the future strategy, which will be grounded in lived experience.

Surrey County Council will launch the new Income Maximisation service to strengthen financial resilience and embed the Outcomes Framework and all‑age principles into future strategies, ensuring inclusivity and responsiveness across every stage of the carer journey.

Joint Carers Strategy

The Joint Carers Strategy 2021-24 (extended to 2026) was co-produced with unpaid carers and other stakeholders, building progress on the previous strategy in Surrey.

There are six main priorities within the strategy:

  1. Commission high quality services – this priority highlighted the commitment for carer support services in Surrey.  These included an information, advice and support service, carer breaks (wellbeing and end of life), GP personal health budgets, carer emergency planning and an independent giving carers a voice service.  This priority also incorporates improving the health and wellbeing of unpaid carers in the county.
  2. Promoting carers rights – this priority looks to work on improving carers assessments including transition assessments from children’s services to adult services, all services will promote inclusivity and diversity, and look to improve training available for carers to take part in.
  3. Increasing the visibility of carers – this priority looks to support professionals to identify unpaid carers and refer for support as appropriate, it also looks at enabling self-identification. We also committed to supporting young adult carers through the transition from young carer to adult carers in those important years of 18-24 and carer aware training for professionals to improve knowledge.
  4. Strengthen carer voice – this priority aims to involve carer voice wherever we can within the system.  This includes an established Carers Partnership Group where at least 50% of the membership will be unpaid carers.  This group meets quarterly to review current delivery and share their views on emerging priorities and upcoming workstreams. Within this area of the carers work, the programme also commissioned an independent ‘Giving Carers a Voice’ service, with the aim to hear from carers directly on what is working well and not so well in the county in its support for carers.
  5. Support working carers – In Surrey, we want to ensure that carers who want to work should be enabled to do so and should not be discriminated against.  Carers should be supported in the workplace to maintain their employment status.  Our aims are for staff within NHS and Social Care to complete Carer Awareness training to improve their knowledge and skills in order to support colleagues who are working carers; and developing a working carers passport and staff carer contingency plan to assist in open conversations with line managers around the caring responsibilities someone may have outside of the workplace.
  6. Effective communication and engagement – Communications with and for carers should be easy to navigate, tailored to individual needs, with the information provided in a format that carers can access and understand. There are several mechanisms in place to communicate and engage with carers.  This workstream looks at the diversity of communication and engagement, improving the accessibility of information and moving forward to a person-centred approach to communication.

Surrey Carers Strategy 2021 to 2026 (surreycc.gov.uk)

Young Carers Strategy

The Surrey Young Carers Strategy 2022-2026 was co-produced with young carers and stakeholders, ensuring that Surrey were able to work towards improving the lives of young people who care for someone.

There are six main priorities within the strategy:

  1. Increasing the visibility of young carers – Young people who care for someone are usually hidden within society.  This priority looks to improve the ways professionals are able to identify and support those young carers.
  2. Promoting young carers rights – Young carers and their families are entitled to request a young carer’s assessment, and young carers transition assessment to ensure their needs are met at every stage of their lives as a young carer.  This priority works on improving the knowledge of professionals in any setting to raise this assessment with families.
  3. Self-identification – Using a whole family approach, we want parents and guardians to feel safe informing professionals of the caring responsibilities their children are undertaking so appropriate support can be provided.
  4. Appropriate Services – Young carers who have access to support services are supported to have a life without inappropriate caring responsibilities.  This priority looks to ensure that support services respond to young carers needs in a flexible way when the young carer needs it.
  5. Improved Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health – Being a young carers can have a negative impact on their emotional wellbeing and mental health.  This priority looks at implementing the THRIVE framework across the system and working towards referral and assessment routes being made simple consistent and clear.
  6. Safeguarding – This priority is around ensuring that young carers are placed at the centre of all activities professionals are involved in and ensuring the voice of the young carer is heard to understand the caring role to ensure that activities are appropriate.

Surrey Young Carers Strategy (surreycc.gov.uk)