Live project case studies

Unpaid carers can often feel alone, unconnected and sometimes unable to talk about their feelings or struggles.  Lincolnshire is supporting unpaid carers by offering arts, heritage, and nature-based activities, designed to improve their wellbeing and help them build contacts and feel more part of their community. Through consistent co-production, carers have shaped activities and respite care provided, ensuring their needs are met and that they are comfortable having time away from loved ones.

This project offers an alternative to traditional care interventions, focusing on proactive, early support to prevent carer burnout rather than reacting to crises. By integrating nature and creativity, it offers carers tools for wellbeing and resilience, while creating community and a space to talk with others. Social impact evaluation is being led by the University of Lincoln, providing valuable insights into the effectiveness of these activities through qualitative measures.

By also running training for local practitioners in delivering arts and nature activities alongside, the benefits will have impact beyond the current participants. SCIE is supporting Lincolnshire in developing a blueprint model for this approach that will allow for scaling and replication across the country.

Read the full case study, including an overview of SCIE support, emerging learnings and key impact.

The Bridgit AI chatbot has been introduced to support carers across Peterborough, offering a one-stop platform for information, advice, and links to relevant organisations. Developed by the Caring Together Charity in partnership with local councils, the platform provides carers with instant answers to their questions and personalised guidance. Available through a website or WhatsApp, Bridgit is designed to complement, not replace, in-person services, drawing on trusted sources like the NHS, Age UK, and Carers UK.

This project aligns to the Integrated Care System (ICS) co-produced ‘All-Age Carer Strategy’, most notably:

• Reaching and identifying carers, including young carers and parent carers
• Ensuring easy access to information

The platform aims to increase the independence and wellbeing of carers, promoting a holistic, person-centred approach to care. This approach helps reduce the reliance on formal care services, which in turn supports cost savings for the local authority.

The platform has been piloted by local primary care networks and voluntary organisations, demonstrating successful partnership work across the local area. . As of March 2025, the project has:

• identified 567 new carers
• had 627 self-help plans created by carers

AI tools such as Bridgit’s can help reduce care review backlogs, giving staff more time for face-to-face visits.

Read more on  BBC Online.

Rutland is developing a bespoke carer support package, learning from Shared Lives models in their neighbouring Integrated Care System (ICS) area. The project will combine respite and day care services for older adults with flexible, community-based care, empowering carers and those they care for and preventing burnout.

We are working closely together with Rutland,  playing an ongoing ‘critical friend’ role throughout project development. Support so far has included providing our expertise in project scoping andbusiness planning, and ensuring the project stays aligned with best practice. Importantly, we are also supporting Rutland to connect with nearby local areas within their ICS for valuable shared learning and peer insights. Next steps for Rutland are focused on engaging carers in meaningful co-production to shape the service and tailor their approach.

The project has the potential to prevent hospital admissions, support timely discharges, and build a community-led approach that strengthens local networks of support for both carers and those they care for.

In Cambridgeshire, a project led by Arthur Rank Hospice Charity and Cambridgeshire County Council is helping social care practitioners build confidence in having end-of-life conversations with unpaid carers. The initiative focuses on upskilling practitioners to ensure that a consistent approach and language is used across both health and care systems, increasing skills, knowledge and confidence when having difficult conversations. This provides a more holistic care by involving both the person being cared for and the unpaid carer in the process.

The project has already reached over 100 practitioners through face-to-face training, and activities are currently in place to transition the training to an e-learning platform for wider scalability and marketing to other areas across the country. This will include learning modules, podcasts and periodic updates with case studies to ensure continuous learning.

The delivery modules will form part of grass-root training for newly qualified social workers, fully endorsed by Anglia Ruskin Universities.

Local authority leads commented on ringfenced funding allowing teams to work outside of traditional systems and processes, allowing flexibility to be more creative in developing solutions.

Read the full case study, including an overview of SCIE support, emerging learnings and key impact.

If you have any enquiries around the training, please contact kulvinder.kaur@cambridgeshire.gov.uk.

Cheshire and Merseyside are home to some of the UK’s highest density areas of unpaid carers, with more than one in ten residents living in St Helens, Knowsley and Halton, providing some form of unpaid care.

This Integrated Care System (ICS) area used ARF funding to work with online carer-led business Mobilise  to launch a regional digital carers service in November 2024, in partnership with the nine local authorities in the region: Liverpool, Halton, Knowsley, Sefton, Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, St Helens, Warrington and Wirral.

Mobilise’s online platform is a digital tool that helps local areas identify unpaid carers and then allows them to self-serve ‘24/7’. This empowers unpaid carers to access information and support. Digital support services include an online peer community of carers across the UK, easy to use self-service tools, tailor made support guides, information on carers rights and an AI-powered ‘assistant’.

Since launching and up to January 2025, the service has:

• Reached 14,000 unpaid carers
• Supported and engaged over 4,000 carers
• Helped carers access £352,818.26 in Carer’s Allowance support

From those accessing the service, 29% of interactions have occurred at weekends, and 74% engage outside of typical working hours, emphasising the need for flexible, digital support.

Over the past six years in Worcestershire, family carers have continuously fed back that their main issue with health and social care support is around when the person they care for is discharged from hospital. They are often not involved in this process, so don’t know what the discharge journey will look like, or what support they might need to put into place at home, causing a lot of stress and anxiety.

To change this, Worcestershire County Council has set up a guiding coalition of partners, including local carers organisation Worcestershire Association of Carers (WAC) and technology provider Taking Care, to help find a solution, looking at how to use technology to better support carers through and beyond the hospital discharge process.

The project has launched in the stroke unit of a local hospital, where caring roles often begin suddenly. A dedicated Hospital Discharge Carers Adviser now works on the ward, identifying carers early, guiding them through discharge, and connecting them to support, for a more holistic approach. Alongside this, 60 free technology enabled care kits have been dedicated to the project, including emergency buttons and falls monitors, to help carers feel more confident and reducing the risk of readmission.

Since the Hospital Discharge Carers Adviser has been in place since 1 February 2025, seven new carers have been identified and six technology enabled care kits have been deployed.

The wider impact of this project for the area overall is improved partnership and collaboration between organisations, leading to a more cohesive system.

Read the full case study, including an overview of SCIE support, emerging learnings and key impact.

Westmorland and Furness have invested their ARF grant entirely into recruitment for Shared Lives, a scheme that pairs an adult or young person who needs long term support with a local person in their community who has registered to be a Shared Lives carer. The local authority wants to increase the number of Shared Lives carers locally,

The Westmorland and Furness Shared Lives team have been working closely alongside the internal council communications team to improve marketing collateral, streamline website applications and implement Facebook ads.

The teams have used previously conducted Acorn demographic profiling, which has provided nuanced insight on their target audiences (where they do their weekly food shop and what they watch on TV, etc.), based on those currently enlisted. This has helped to shape messaging, define target areas for leaflet drops, and provide best locations for in-person recruitment stands. Other recruitment methods include radio and Facebook adverts, sponsoring the local rugby team and attending community events, such as open days at SEN colleges.

By timing leaflet drops with boosted Facebook and radio adverts, Westmorland and Furness went from an average of none or one enquiry a month before the project began, to 60 new enquiries in September 2024. At the start of the programme they had 23 carers enrolled, and in the next three months this is expected to increase to 42. They are projecting that by the end of 25/26, they will have 50 carers enlisted.

With the increase in enrolment and need for service clearly evidenced through the recruitment campaign, next steps are growing the Shared Lives service in-house and employing more staff to diversify the local offer.