Carers Week 2026
This week (8 – 14 June) is Carers Week 2026.
Carers Week is an annual campaign to raise awareness of caring, highlight the challenges unpaid carers face, and recognise the contribution they make to families and communities throughout the UK. It also helps people who don’t think of themselves as having caring responsibilities to identify as carers and access much-needed support.
This year's theme, ‘Building Carer Friendly Communities’, focuses on the importance of creating inclusive, supportive communities which recognise and value unpaid carers. It highlights how individuals, organisations, employers, and services in a community can come together to understand the realities carers face and take action to support them.
This Carers Week, we’re sharing how we support and work with carers to deliver the best care possible for our service users.
Our Mental Health Carers Handbook is a really useful place to start if supporting somebody with their mental health. Visit our Carer booklets, leaflets and more page to find this and other written resources.
Find out more about carers work across the Trust under the headings below.
Our Carer Council – Supporting the Carer Voice
To support the Trust to understand what we do well and where we should look to improve, we have worked with a group of our carers to establish a Trust-wide Carer Council.
The Council is made up of carers who are passionate about improving mental health services, representing the voice of other carers, and who are keen to make good connections with other carers at their local level.
Since forming in 2024, the Carer Council has supported us to improve services for the carers, service users and communities that we serve.
Members of our Carer Council are passionate about reflecting on the experiences of carers supporting those accessing our services. They work with us to ensure the voice of carers is listened to and acted upon in line with the commitments set out in our Together Strategy.
The Council has co-produced their own Terms of Reference and works closely with our central Engagement and Experience Team to support improvements based on their experiences as carers and their experience of mental health services.
To ensure our Carer Council is representative of the communities that we serve, we are looking to recruit carers to get involved. To express your interest in joining, please email ServiceUsersandCarers@gmmh.nhs.uk
Here is what some current members of our Carer Council have to say about their work:
“It’s important to me that my lived experience as a carer is heard at the highest level in the Trust. By getting involved, your story could help others on a similar journey.”
“After some bad experiences with the trust, I engaged with the Engagement Team to share my experiences. Later I was asked to use those experiences to get involved with the Carer Council. I urge anyone with good or bad experience to get involved.”
“Representing the lived experiences of both a carer and a service user helps to drive meaningful change throughout GMMH's transformation. It's gives purpose to the challenges we've faced, turning difficult experiences into opportunities to improve services and move towards more preventative, compassionate care.”
The Riverside Centre and Carer Support
The Recovery Academy Riverside Campus provides a safe and comfortable environment to provide adult learning, whilst supporting recovery and mental wellbeing with all our service users, carers, families and staff. The campus is also the base for Eileen Doyle, dedicated Carer Support Worker for The Riverside Centre.
Eileen has lived experience of being a carer for her brother and supports our carers with practical and emotional support whilst we provide care for their loved ones. Eileen encourages carers to come together and share experiences through a monthly online forum and facilitates regular carers events, both on the wards and at the Recovery Academy Riverside Campus.
To support carers in the runup to Carers Week, Eileen facilitated a carers event at The Curve, Prestwich on Sunday 7 June. All carers and families with a loved one accessing our Adult Forensic Services (both inpatient and community) were able to come along, meet other carers and key staff, and share their experiences.
Eileen listens to the voice of carers to develop her role to best suit individual needs. She can provide support to carers wanting to attend meetings, forums and events, access local carers resources across the borough (including referrals for carers assessments), and navigate any barriers to our carers accessing the teams.
She listens to carer feedback and advocates for their voice at the monthly Service User/Carer oversight meeting at the Riverside Centre. She also follows up with carers after this to ensure they receive further communication when they have raised areas for improvement with us.
If you’re a carer of somebody accessing support through our Adult Forensic Services and would like to discuss the carer support available, please speak to the ward team involved. Eileen will then contact you to discuss carer support personalised to you.
The Recovery Academy and the support available to carers, family and friends
The Recovery Academy is honoured to be involved in celebrating Carers Week by acknowledging the invaluable contribution our carers make to the lives of service users across our services.
We spoke to Amy Lawrence, Recovery Academy Team Manager, for further information.
“I feel very honoured to have joined the Recovery Academy team earlier this year, after many years working in clinical services within the Trust.
“Since joining and being involved in co-facilitating a number of our courses, I can truly say how much our offering benefits carers and loved ones – they can learn more about what may benefit the person they support but also place emphasis on their own mental health and wellbeing which I believe is paramount as an unpaid carer myself.
“The Recovery Academy is for everyone and the community spirit it provides can be extremely supportive, with carers as no exemption.”
Some courses currently available with our Recovery Academy that we feel carers would find beneficial include:
- Courses that help raise awareness of mental health conditions, such as “Living well with dementia”, “Understanding and responding to crises”, and “Becoming a parent and the effect on mental health” – these can help carers to understand more about what their loved one might be experiencing and what can help them in their recovery.
- Skills based courses such as “An Introduction to listening skills” , “Understanding and managing worry”, and “Developing your assertiveness” – these can give carers confidence to access the services and support they need, as well as communicate more effectively with their loved one and manage their own stress.
- Courses that promote their own wellbeing and self-care such as “Using creativity to improve mental well-being”, “Yoga and well-being”, and “An introduction to Improv” – these courses allow carers to focus on their own needs and find healthy ways to cope.
We are keen for more carers to access the courses and resources available through the Recovery Academy – all courses and resources are free, and the person they support does not need to be under the care of Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH) in order to be eligible. We are looking to develop our offering to carers further as our new terms launch throughout the year so keep your eyes peeled for more information over the coming months.
If you would like to see what the Recovery Academy can offer you and create you very own Recovery Academy account, visit the Recovery Academy website
You can also contact the Recovery Academy team directly with any questions on 0161 938 5122 or email recoveryacademy@gmmh.nhs.uk
Service User and Carer Engagement in Care Self-Assessment
Meaningful collaboration with service users and carers is central to high-quality mental health care. Our Together Strategy, national policy, CQC expectations, and Trust values emphasise shared decision-making, personalised care, and authentic involvement.
Taking into consideration the competing demands in services, rather than request multiple self-assessments, we have pulled together a number of requirements into one document, our Service User and Carer Engagement Standards. These have been co-produced with service users, carers and staff, and pull together best practice from the following:
GMMH Involvement Standards
A set of standards that have been co-produced with our Service User Council and Carer Council. These were developed using their lived experience of mental health services to support meaningful collaborative care.
Triangle of Care
A national scheme that we have proudly supported since 2015. The scheme was initially developed by a group of mental health carers who wanted to use their experiences to ensure that carers were being identified, involved and supported by mental health services.
NHSE I & We Statements
These were developed with service users and carers and will form part of the NHS inpatient contract from April 2027. They express what quality, person-centred care should look and feel like for the people who use our services.
This new self-assessment tool brings together the aforementioned pieces of work to support services to reflect on how effectively they:
- Involve people in decisions about their own care and treatment
- Work collaboratively with carers
- Embed shared decision-making into everyday practice
- Create a culture of real partnership
The Service User and Carer Engagement Standards are currently being piloted across both inpatient and community rehabilitation services with the aim of using lived experience to inform real improvements. Watch this space for further information on the pilot progress and plans for roll out across the Trust.
For further information, please email serviceusersandcarers@gmmh.nhs.uk
