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Promoting family-led support: NFCN Survey

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The National Family Carer Network (NFCN) invites carers to complete their Promoting family-led support survey (opens new window).

For many years family carers have designed, developed and managed support for their learning disabled relatives. Their intimate experience of what good support looks like, their energy and passion, and their lifelong commitment to their relatives means that they are often best placed to lead this process.

Family-led support comes in various shapes and sizes; it can be 'hands-on' or 'arms-length'. It includes:

  • Leading planning
  • Managing a relative's direct payment to pay for personal assistants
  • Coordinating 'pooled funding' on behalf of several people with learning disabilities
  • Setting up a service
  • Working in partnership with an agency.

Changes to the way that support for people with learning disabilities is funded and purchased means that families will have an even more important role to ensuring their relatives get good quality support. However, many families never consider the option of 'doing it themselves' because they do not know what it would involve, what the benefits are, or where they could get help. Over the next two years the National Family Carer Network will be working to promote family-led support.

National Family Carers Network want to:

  • Understand more about the experiences of families that have developed their own support
  • Find out family carers views family-led support and what help they would like to consider it as an option
  • Develop practical resources that provide families with the information, advice and assistance they need when thinking about arranging support themselves.

You can get involved by completing the National Family Carers Network survey and telling them about your involvement in your relative's support and your views about what might happen in the future.

To find out more about the work or request a paper copy of the survey, please contact Paul Swift, 07740 946564 (mobile), 0117 9294365 (telephone) or paulswift.research@gmail.com.