Family Carers' Prescription | Respite For Carers

Family Carers’ Prescription

Are you caring for someone and feeling emotionally or physically overwhelmed?
Do you have your own health needs or medical appointment that you need to attend?
Are you feeling close to crisis point?
Is the person you care for having palliative / end of life care?

A Family Carers’ Prescription gives carers of any age, including young carers and parent carers, access to a specialist worker at Caring Together who will help you make a plan to support your needs.

This means you could have help with your own physical or mental health (which could include a break), support to make it easier for you to attend your own medical appointments, or help to buy equipment or access services that will help make things that little bit easier for you.

The support can include someone being with the person you look after. This service is available to carers who are registered with a GP surgery within the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Integrated Care Board.

Not sure if you are covered? Check to see if your surgery is included. Please note, that Hertfordshire Practices (Barley Surgery, Roysia Surgery and Royston Health Centre) are not covered by this service.

How to get a Family Carers’ Prescription

We want it to be as simple as possible for carers to access a Family Carers’ Prescription. There are two ways to get a family carers prescription:

Through your GP Surgery – You can go to your surgery or ask for a telephone appointment with a GP/member of staff at the practice. They can discuss your circumstances and what support you think you might need. Your doctor can agree the prescription and contact Caring Together. The surgery will also be able to record you are a carer so that they can support you appropriately in the future. If you do not get a response from your GP please let us know and we will follow up on your behalf.
Through Caring Together – If you find it difficult to speak with your GP, or for whatever reason don’t feel able to go to your surgery, you can contact one of our team directly. They can talk you through what support we might be able to offer. We can contact your GP on your behalf to get the Family Carer’s Prescription authorised. We can also look at other ways we may be able to support you if you want this.

Are you a GP or working in a surgery and want to know more?

We are able to offer a range of support to help GP surgeries better identify and support carers of all ages. This includes awareness raising and helping them to work to models of best practice. If you would like to know how we can help your surgery, please contact us on 0345 241 0954.

We have worked with GP surgeries to help them identify and support carers who have gone on to be awarded our Carer Friendly Tick Award. You can find out more by clicking here.

You can refer someone who is looking after a family member by clicking here to fill in our simple referral form. Or see our contact us page for other ways to get in touch.

We also have free resources available you can use to let unpaid carers know about the support available for them including PowerPoint slides for use on screens in your waiting room, posters and leaflets.