Time for Us

What Time for Us did

This funding helped support PKAVS carers centre to offer a calendar of much needed short break opportunities for unpaid carers (and often the cared for person too) who live in Perth & Kinross (P&K). The calendar of activities was delivered virtually and face to face in locations throughout P&K therefore making these activities more easily accessible for carers to attend.

The type of activities we delivered over the year included:

Young carers Christmas Extravaganza which had 267 young carers, parents and siblings attend. An adult carers Christmas ceilidh which had 107 carers and cared for attend. The day services team delivered two residential breaks in the past year one in Strathpeffer and one in Fort William. This funding helped subsidise the cost of these for the carers and cared for who attended.

Various day trips were delivered across our young, young adult and adult carer services to places like Blair Drummond Safari park, Pitlochry Theatre for their Christmas panto, Edinburgh Christmas markets etc. The PKAVS carers choir continues to be a great success and they have now recorded a song they wrote around the challenges of being a carer called Breathe.

Our day services had the music man come in most weeks to entertain the clients. The majority of clients who attend our day services have a dementia diagnosis and so music is a great way of helping them take trips down memory lane. This funding helped support numerous other peer support groups we run such as the Bridge project for bereaved carers, the walking and cycling groups, Tai Chi sessions, Art with Nicola and Relax with Rosemary and many more besides.

We have no doubt given the feedback we receive that this funding meets the Creative Break principles such as improved wellbeing and supporting carers in sustaining their caring role. Probably our biggest success is also our biggest challenge. The demand to attend these groups and activities is great but given the massive increase in registered carers we've experienced over recent years we have to limit what is available to carers to ensure that everyone who wants to attend gets to go along to something.

What PKAVS carers centre has learned

The first learning is there isn't enough short breaks available to meet the needs of carers. Given we only have a certain amount of funding and the demand is so great there is no doubt we have had to look to make a more targeted offer to those carers we feel are most in need. The obvious problem with this is we are now limited in what we can offer to carers, who with a little bit of support could probably cope with their caring role, but with little to no support move towards crisis point sooner.

There is no doubt that over the past 12 months and more we deliver more services in partnership with other voluntary sector organisations than we've ever done before. As most organisations in this sector are the same, in terms of unprecedented demand and limited resources, it makes sense to pool our resources so we can share the workload and costs. Across all our short break services now we work in partnership with the likes of Saints in the Community, All Strong gym, Live Active Leisure, Mindspace, The Bike Shed and many more besides.

Finding other sources of funding is difficult as most funders now are inundated with applications and so can offer less or sometimes nothing at all. We don't receive much funding from national organisations for short breaks other than what we receive from Shared Care Scotland. We do have some long standing relationships with some smaller, local Trusts like the Basil Death Trust, the Thomson Charitable Trust etc. and some local Rotary clubs etc who help support our short break offers but these amounts still don't allow us to cope with the demand we are experiencing.

How PKAVS carers centre has benefitted from the funding

The honest truth is without this Creative Breaks funding the vast majority (if not all) of the short breaks we offer we wouldn't be able to continue with simply because we wouldn't have the funding in place to cover the costs. Given the funding challenges we've had with statutory sector colleagues over the past few years I feel certain that this funding wouldn't be replaced by funding from them. So the biggest benefit to PKAVS carers centre that this funding provides is it gives us the opportunity to continue to offer a varied and accessible calendar of short break opportunities to unpaid carers of all ages who live in P&K.