Published 7th February 2023
Do you know about the Carers Identity Passport? If you are a carer or if there is a young carer in your family, you are both entitled to a free card that identifies you as a carer for someone who is in a hospital setting, whether it’s outpatients, emergency department or on the ward.
Carers Matter Norfolk and Carers Voice Norfolk and Waveney were told by people looking after family members or friends that they wanted to be recognised as a person’s carer when the person is in hospital.
Therefore, Carers Voice have co-produced a Carers Identity Passport, to ensure carers are recognised and can get the help and support they require.
The card is for all age carers in Norfolk and Waveney, including young carer, young adults carers and parent carers.
The card is available as a digital version which you can download on your phone and a hard-copy card on a lanyard, which you can wear.
Nathanial, a Norfolk Young Carers Forum member said: “The passport will help me with meeting new people from services that are there to help my mum. In the past they have never really respected me or listened to what I had to say.
“It will help me in hospitals because it will make people realise that I am not sitting there for the fun of it and I do need to be there for my mum.”
The Carers Identity Passport is currently recognised within East Coast Community Healthcare, James Paget University Hospitals, Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals, Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust and Norfolk Community Health and Care Trust.
To find out more or request your passport go to www.carersvoice.org/carers-identity-passport/
