Once again a big hello from Your Future!

Firstly we would like to welcome our newly registered Young Adult Carers to the service, we look forward to welcoming them to sessions soon!

This past month has been a fairly busy month for Your Future, with our young adult carers finishing exams, school and university we decided to host a fun pirate theme party to celebrate end of  exams and lead up to our trip to Alton Towers! All the young adults were encouraged to dress up as pirates best dressed pirate would win a £20 cinema voucher. The young adults had a fun filled day of pirate theme activities such as treasure hunts and a selfie treasure hunt as well as a pirate feast.

We would like to say well done to Ksawery who won best dressed pirate with his spectacular costume!!

Coventry Foodbank-Feed the Hungry

On Wednesday 20 July, on behalf of Your Future. Peighton and Kelly from our Young Carers Team visited Coventry Food Bank to deliver the food parcels our Young Adult Carers had put together through their fundraising for Feed the Hungry, Ukrainian families. The food parcels were made up of non perishable items and toiletries for the families arriving in Coventry. Peighton and Kelly were greeted by Hugh from Coventry Food Bank who was very grateful for the generous donation and would like to offer his greatest thank you to all the young adult carers for their donations, keep up the good work!

What’s Cooking?

Part of the service Your Future is able to provide life skills to Young Adult Carers.

On Wednesday 20 July a small group of Young Adults attending a cooking session at the Penny Collard Centre, where they made stir fry. They young adults had a range of different ingredients to choose from to make their stir fry. Staff worked with the young adults to teach them how to prepare the food carefully and safely and assisted them in cooking their stir fry’s. For some of the young adults this was the first time they had cooked and they all really enjoyed it!

Quotes:

“The session was very helpful and I was able to recognise very useful life skills that I can use, I will definitely be making this for my mum”

“I really enjoyed the session, we learnt how to cook stir fry and other domestic tasks such as chopping that will be useful for life in university or away from home”

Upcoming events:

Coming up in the next couple of months:

We will be hosting a Your Future picnic on Sunday 14 August at the War Memorial Park where we will challenging both our Coventry and Warwickshire well-being teams to a friendly game of rounders. This gives our young adult carers and our wellbeing teams an opportunity to meet one another. It should be a good day for all!!

Freshers!

In September we have been invited to attend the freshers events at Coventry University, Warwick University and Coventry College, to raise awareness of Your Future and how we can support Young Adult Carers embarking on their next steps in life. If you or someone you know is starting a new adventure at university or college come and say hello to us are the freshers events!

What's a carers assessment? 

If you've been caring for sometime you may well of been offered a carers assessment. A carers assessment is the opportunity for you to talk to a professional about your caring role, the impact that is has on you and your overall wellbeing and any needs you might have as result.  It will help you talk about the future and help you start to think about other aspects like contingency planning.   

Who can have a carers assessment?

Anyone who has a caring role can have a carers assessment, you don't need to be caring for a certain amount of hours of week and you may even want to think about a carers assessment if you're considering taking on a caring role. 

What can a carers assessment lead to?

A carers assessment should help you think about the support you might need and any support you might need will be explored as part of the assessment. This might be some support to emergency plan or it might be the provision of a Carers Direct Payment to help you purchase goods or services, to help you in your caring role. Often Carers tell us it was the first time they've been able to discuss their own needs in any level of detail.  

Who completes the assessment? 

If you have active involvement with Adult Social Care, then your social work practitioner will offer you an assessment. If you don't have input at present from Adult Social Care you can request an assessment from the Carers Trust Heart of England on 024 7663 2972. 

The Adult Social Care Stakeholders group meets every other month to discuss any updates and influence improvements across Adult Social Care. The group is made up of people in receipt of care and support services, carers and third sector organisations. There is a range of interests and expertise across the group.

Since the beginning of the pandemic we have been meeting online but our aim is to move back to face to face meetings in the near future, we usually meet in the main Council House. If technology permits, we hope that people can join us virtually if they wish. 

Who can attend the group?

We welcome anyone who has recent or current involvement with Adult Social Care and has a drive to see improvement in services. Please contact GetInvolvedasc@coventry.gov.uk

Are there other opportunities for people to involved in shaping Adult Social Care?

We know that a meeting doesn’t suit everyone and we’re trying to develop different ways to get feedback. If people are unable to attend the group we can still provide meeting minutes for those who want to remain informed.

What type of activity have the group been involved in?

The work of the group has been quite varied, from involvement in evaluating tenders, to providing scrutiny through peer reviews. We have also had key representatives involved in recruitment. The group also play a pivotal part in the development of our local account. 

When is the next meeting?

The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 23 August 2023 at 10.30am-12.30pm.  

If you’d like to find out more about the group contact GetInvolvedasc@coventry.gov.uk

The current heatwave may mean that energy use is the last thing on your mind.

But actually the summer is just the right time to start thinking about your energy use over the next few months.

We know that for many people, the huge increase in energy bills will make life incredibly tough.

But there is help at hand.

We’re partnering with Act On Energy – an energy advice charity with more than 20 years’ experience -– to help people across Coventry plan to keep warm and well this winter.

Act on Energy can offer expert advice on:

• Financial assistance to help with fuel bills
• Energy debt
• Billing issues
• Broken heating systems
• Energy efficiency tips to reduce your bills
• Grants and funding for energy efficiency measures.

The advice is free – simply call on 0800 988 2881 or check out the website: Act On Energy

Some funding schemes require certain criteria to be met – but others don’t, so it’s well worth giving them a call now to see how they can help you. Don’t leave it until the after the summer and the autumn price rises to seek help.