Listening to Carers: Shaping the Future of Support in Central Bedfordshire

Healthwatch Central Bedfordshire, in collaboration with Central Bedfordshire Council, facilitated a focus group to capture the lived experiences and insights of unpaid carers on 4 June 2025. This engagement aimed to inform the council’s upcoming procurement process for carer support services.  Six carers took part.

Key findings:

• Many people didn't identify as carers, but external validation often helped participants recognise their role.
• People often didn't know about available support services.
• Services were often hard to navigate and poorly signposted.
• GP support was seen as inconsistent as not all carers were flagged on medical records.
• People wanted a mix of online and face to face support.  Peer support was highly valued.
• People didn't like digital only services, turnover of care staff and unpersonalised services.

Carers made it clear that they want more than basic compliance or minimum standards, they want services designed around their lived experience. They  called for:

• Early recognition and validation of their caring role, ensuring carers are seen and supported from the outset.
• Accessible and flexible support pathways that are simple to navigate and tailored to individual circumstances.
• Reliable, trusted respite care and sustained investment in carers’ own health and wellbeing.
• Better integration of carer identification within health systems to enable proactive, coordinated support. 

Above all, carers asked for a shift towards services that deliver genuine, empathetic, person-centred support, services that recognise the complexity of caring and respond with the compassion and consistency that carers deserve.