How you make a difference

Over the last 15 years with your help we have worked to make a dramatic difference to carers' lives across the UK. From providing benefit advice and grants for essential support and arranging respite care, our role is to support carers wherever and whenever they need our support. Our 133 Carers’ Centres and online services offer a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of carers across the UK.

Today we are the largest provider of carer support in the UK offering unique and innovative services. This work would have been impossible without the generosity of individuals supporters as well as companies and organisations. Without your involvement hundreds of thousands of carers would have to cope alone.

In the future our role is to reach even more carers with high quality services and also to improve the quality of the range of services we offer. We will continue to work in partnership with like-minded organisations to campaign at the highest political level to achieve long-term positive change for carers.

Find out what The Trust are doing now - download our latest supporters newsletter:

We Care - supporters' newsletter May 2010 (1.8 MB)

Your support has helped us to grow our network of Carers Centres and develop and extend the support we provide for carers:

In 1993-94 the number of Carers’ Centres was 16 in areas as diverse as Sefton (Liverpool), Aberdeen, Newry and Mourne in Northern Ireland, Gwynedd (North Wales) and London. 15 years later we now reach over 400,000 carers through our 144 independently managed network of Carers’ Centres.

Since 1994 we have been able to offer a number of funds that help carers, including The Educational Bursary Scheme for Carers, Carers Relief Fund, Carers Break Fund, Young Carers Activities Fund, Foresters Young Carers Transport Fund and a Refurbishment Fund. We now award around 650 individual grants totalling £230,000 each year. These are designed to improve carers’ lives and help them meet the cost of things like transport, household appliances and specialist equipment.

Youngcarers.net - The Trust launched the UK’s first ever website for young carers in September 2004 which provides online advice, information and support. The website launch was backed with the fact that the number of young carers could be nearer to a million which is much larger than previously estimated.

In 2004 the Government announced plans to axe the Children’s Fund by £25 million which would have affected many of our young carer services. The Trust embarked on a campaign to put pressure on decision makers, with the outcome that the DfES identified additional resources thereby reducing the cuts.