Carers Week: Using lived experience as a Carer Peer Support worker to make a difference to carers and their families

It's Carers Week, 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.  

Scott Pomberth is a Carer Peer Support Worker and Carer Link in the City Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Team (CRHT). He has been in this role for the past year and shares why he loves his job supporting carers and families.

Carer Peer support workers are people who dedicated to supporting the unpaid Carers of the patients who are using our services.   

Scott Pomberth

“I have been a Carer Peer Support Worker since April last year, and I am settling in well. The team I am in now is much larger than the previous team I was in and getting to know everyone, and remembering their names was a challenge!

“This is the first time I am directly working with and supporting carers and families face to face, and I am finding it very rewarding. The feeling of knowing you have made a difference to people’s lives, by using my Peer Support Training skills and knowledge, even if it’s just a small difference is fantastic.  The Peer Support Core Principles are an integral aspect of the work I do and can be utilised in many ways so that each carer or family member can receive a specific support package which meets their individual needs.

“I have a high turnover of people who I support as my role allows me to work with carers and families whilst their loved one in under the Crisis Team. Each case is unique and requires me to give carer information, assess the needs of the carer and take into consideration their welfare in different ways.

“I can transfer the skills and knowledge I have gained from my experience (as stated previously) to supporting Trust members of staff who are carers. I think its essential staff carers are recognised and celebrated and are explicitly supported to continue to work in the Trust in addition to their caring responsibilities. A holistic approach should be adopted to ensure staff carers receive all the support they identified as requiring. It is sometimes overwhelming at the beginning of being a staff carer, not knowing where to go or how to access support for themselves. This is where the Staff Carer Champion role is very important in offering staff carer support and signposting to specific support services. My vision is for every Trust team to have a named Staff Carer Champion as a valuable resource for all staff carers to access when they need to.”      

If you are interested in using your lived experience as a service user or carer, and working together to improve services, improve our culture and improve people’s lives, you can read more here: https://www.nottinghamshirehealthcare.nhs.uk/use-your-lived-experience . 

If you’re a carer and would like more information about carer support, you can find more information here: https://www.nottinghamshirehealthcare.nhs.uk/families-and-carers

For more information contact: involvement2@nottshc.nhs.uk