About the Supporting Carers in General Practice programme

The Supporting Carers in General Practice e-learning programme has been developed for primary care professionals, to help them to support people who care for others. It has been developed by the Royal College of General Practitioners, in partnership with the Princess Royal Trust for Carers and with support from The Children’s Society. The programme contains six e-learning sessions:

1. Supporting those who provide care for other people
2. Identifying carers
3. Organising your practice to support carers
4. Supporting young carers
5. Support for older people and their carers
6. Supporting the carers of people with challenging problems

Please spend three minutes looking at the video below from Clare Gerada, previous Chairman of the Royal College of GPs, on five simple ways GPs can make a difference for carers.

More information

Why supporting carers matters

A carer is someone who provides support to a partner, child, relative, friend or neighbour who could not manage without this help. This could be due to age, physical or mental illness, addiction or disability.

On any practice patient list, one in ten people is a carer, with 22% of those carers performing caring duties for more than 50 hours every week. It is estimated that at least 175,000 carers in the UK are children. Carers underpin our social care system within the UK. With an ageing population, the role of the carer is ever more vital to our society. However, although many carers enjoy their caring role and want to continue caring, there is evidence to suggest that they suffer physical, psychological and social consequences as a result of their caring role.

Carers are more likely to have seen their GP recently than any other support professional. It is vital for GPs within primary care teams to know how to identify and support carers in order to maintain the health of the carer, and to preserve the care giving situation.