Carers Trust Network Partners Quarriers Carer Services awarded the Excellence for Carers Award

Carers Trust is delighted to announce that its Quarriers Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray local authority network members have successfully achieved the Carers Trust Excellence for Carers Award.

The award for all three network members follows a rigorous assessment of their services to unpaid carers across all three local authority areas. The three Quarriers services demonstrated excellence across the quality standard areas of Excellence for Carers.

Overall there was strong evidence of good service provision provided to meet carer needs, outcomes and interests. Values of co-production and principle of good conversations as the foundations for carer engagement, support and ‘assessment’.

Each service is actively looking at new ways to support and engage carers in services. Real passion and desire to make a difference to the lives of carers was evident and the active pursuit to use technology where they can, to support carer services.

Quarriers Carer Services' staff on winning the award

Welcoming the award for Quarriers Moray Carers Support Service, Sandi Downing, said: “We’re delighted to have the commitment and professionalism of the team recognised in this way, and look forward to continuing to work with our Carers Trust network partners to improve the lives of carers in Moray and across the UK.”

Welcoming the award for Quarriers Aberdeen Carers Support Service, Joanna Mcpherson, said: “This has been a very exciting time not just for the staff team who work so hard but also for all the many carers who help us deliver our coproduced service. We hope to continue to grow and develop as a service and welcome the views and ideas put forward by the carers we support.”

Welcoming the award for Quarriers Aberdeenshire Carers Support Service, Service Coordinator, Heather Knowles said: “We are delighted and very proud that our Carer Support Service received the Carers Trust Excellence for Carers Award.  This award  provides national recognition of  the fantastic work carried out by the team.”

What Quarriers Carer Services showed to win the award

By achieving the Excellence for Carers Award by Carers Trust, all three Quarriers Carer Services in the North East of Scotland have been able to demonstrate:

• The passion, commitment and enthusiasm of the team, at all levels, to provide excellent services for carers
• A genuine can-do attitude, with opportunities to overcome challenges continually sought and carers are at the heart of all services and all service developments
• Services are run as independent services, each delivering services developed to meet the needs of their local communities, while benefiting from the collective knowledge and experience that being part of Quarriers brings
• Clear staff dedication provided to case management systems, ensuring effective and efficient use across the carer service, and that there is system leadership and management
• The Equal Partner in Care principles are evident and a ‘carer-centred’ approach to each carer service shines through  

In making the award, Carers Trust has stated that specifically for the Aberdeen Carer Support Service, that the team have done an incredible job of building the service to where it is and has demonstrated a really positive approach to staff wellbeing, as well as a shared learning culture and a good support structure for all staff.

Likewise for the Carers Trust network member in Aberdeenshire, the report noted that there was evidence of good solid foundations of a local carer service with a clear focus on the fundamentals and demonstration of the Equal Partner in Care principles that connect to carer identification, support and carers assessment and signposting.

Clear awareness of capacity and the need to be an active partner in the wider health and social care system, working with others to achieve outcomes with and for carers.

Similarly, the Carers Trust local carer organisation network member in Moray provides a broad range of services to both adult and young carers, with the team demonstrating a positive approach to increase capacity within existing resources.

And the staff expressed a real sense of pride in the work they were doing and the difference they are making for carers.

Areas of excellence

The Excellence for Carers report also acknowledged a series of shared areas of good practice, notably:

• Carer identification
• Person centred services
• Quality assurance
• Recognising and managing challenges to build sustainability and;
• Carer involvement

As well as signalling the quality of its services for unpaid carers, the Carers Trust Excellence for Carers Award for all three Quarriers carer services in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray means their partners, stakeholders and commissioners/funders can be confident they are partnering with local carer organisations/services that have best practice and sustainability embedded into their culture and practice.

Carers Trust on Quarriers Carer Services

Helen Oliver, Quality and Improvement Manager at Carers Trust, continued: “We are really pleased to be able to award Excellence for Carers to all three Quarriers services – Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray."

"Across all the services, the teams demonstrated their passion for providing high quality services to carers that really make a difference to their lives."

"Carers were clearly at the heart of everything that the services do, and we were pleased to see the impact of shared working whilst maintaining a person-centred approach in each locality. We very much look forward to working with the services further and seeing how they grow and develop.”

About Excellence for Carers

Excellence for Carers is the Carers Trust organisational standard for best practice in delivering services, information, and advice to unpaid carers.

It is awarded to partner charities (Network Partners) within the Carers Trust Network able to demonstrate both an existing excellence of service to unpaid carers and a culture that fosters continuous improvement and striving for excellence.

Carers Trust developed the award so charities within its Network are continually evaluating and improving the quality of services, thereby improving the quality of life for unpaid carers across the UK.