It’s just under a year since the Fund launched Carer’s Passport, an initiative designed to help civil servants with onerous caring responsibilities at home which affect their ability to manage at work. And the Fund can reveal, as Carer’s Week gets underway, that it’s been a great success.

The project has been funded by the Department for Education and works with both managers and individual applicants to achieve a harmonious and productive work pattern whilst also attending to needs at home.

And the need for the Passport has been proven by the numbers of people helped since we launched the initiative in September 2010.

Speaking at the Fund’s Annual General Meeting last week, Help and Advisory Director Judith Smith revealed that 147 people have been directly helped with their caring needs, while 63 Carer’s Passports have been issued, clearly setting out their circumstances and laying out practical workable proposals and solutions for line managers to consider.

Among them are:

• a wife caring for her husband requesting a permanent no night shift arrangement
• a sister caring for her brother needing to work from home 1 day per month so that she can attend carers support meetings
• a husband looking after his wife wanting to phone her during working hours
• a daughter looking for condensed hours whilst her disabled mother has a full heart and lung transplant
• and a husband who needs to go home sometimes to attend to his wife when she has manic episodes and is at great risk of self harming.

View a video of Angela Rippon talking about her caring experiences:

Judith says, “It is really interesting to note that 77% of all enquiries come from people who have never had any contact with the Fund before. Applicants come from a wide range of departments.

“Introducing a project such as the carers passport may not have been possible in previous generations of the Fund’s history but, in this our 125th year, it shows that being flexible and open to change and development means that the Fund plays its part alongside employers and employees in the civil service and can be as relevant to what’s happening to people today as it’s always been throughout our history.”

It’s estimated that 30,000 civil servants have some form of caring responsibility, and Carer’s Passport expects to help even more people as the initiatives gathers support from more departments and Associated Organisations.

To find out more about it, visit the Carer’s Passport section of our website.

Alternatively, if you want to have a confidential chat with someone about a caring responsibility you need help with, contact our Freephone on 0800 056 2424, or e-mail the Carer’s Passport team.

Civil Service Benevolent Fund, Health, wellbeing and care, charity

Last updated 346 days ago by Jamie Hill