it may seem to you all that we have been very quiet and haven’t been making sure that policymakers in Essex are thinking about people with a learning disability and their families, please be assured that we have been very busy and we will be…

We have been asked by Essex County Council to share the following with our families regarding carer support services in Essex: Essex Carers Service: What you need to know  Who is the Essex Carers Service for? A carer is someone who looks after a relative…

Following our update in October there has been some more correspondence between the network and Essex Mencap with Cllr Spence. We have collated all the correspondence into one chronological document:  ECN Essex Mencap – social care charging – all correspondence Sept-Dec 17 Cllr Spence also…

  First of all on behalf of Essex Mencap and the Essex Carers Network, we would like to extend a big thank you to everyone who responded to our survey on the revised charging system introduced by the County Council. It highlighted some alarming situations….

Our meeting in March was a slightly overdue celebration of the networks 10th Birthday. We had a great meeting with invited speakers from The supporting carers In Essex partnership – Sonja Watts and The Hamelin Trust – Rachel Rafferty, who talked about how they could…

Today at our management meeting we remembered Thomas, a young man with down syndrome and autism, he didn’t live in Essex he was from Bradford and had been staying in a treatment and assessment unit in Sheffield. Thomas didn’t want to be there and his…

Currently, carers don’t have a legal right to receive support, although local authorities can provide support at their discretion. This means that access to assessment and the range of support on offer can vary considerably. The Care Act, which comes into force in April 2015, gives local…

We have met as a management team recently to begin to really explore where we want to be in the next five years. We know getting this right is going to take time and we have more meetings planned.

We wanted to update you on discussions which are taking place between Essex County Council and families caring for working aged adults with learning disabilities.  Earlier this year, the Council invited Essex Carers Network and Essex Mencap Society to work with them to plan improved…