About the report
Bristol City Council (alongside North Somerset Council and South Gloucestershire Council) received funding from the Department of Health and Social Care as part of the Accelerating Reform Fund (ARF).
The fund supports adult social care with the aim of improving the quality and accessibility of services, with a particular focus on services to support unpaid carers.
One of the fund's projects focused on ways to support unpaid carers to have breaks that are tailored to their needs.
We've been working with carers with lived expertise and representatives from local carers' support organisations to co-produce these innovative projects. These organisations include:
- Carers Support
- Rethink Mental Illness
- Bristol Black Carers
- Chinese Community Wellbeing Society
Between July and September 2024, focus groups were conducted with 70 Bristol carers to understand their experiences of taking different types of breaks, the breaks that they want, and how they want to access information about breaks.
This was to inform innovative access to breaks and the Bristol All Age Carer's Strategy 2025 – 2029.
The full report below outlines what Bristol carers said during these focus groups. It covers:
- the key barriers that carers in Bristol face when taking a break
- carers' experiences of different types of breaks
- carers' suggestions of new types of breaks they would like and need
- how carers in Bristol wish to receive information about breaks