Supporting Carers - Strengthening Care

Bristol Black Carers provides culturally-appropriate support and services to the Black and Ethnic Minority (BME) carers in Bristol. Through our work we strive to reduce enduring health and social care inequalities.

We carry out extensive outreach work within BME communities to identify needs; we work with a range of diverse communities and different faith and cultural groups. Our outreach work enables us to meet the individual needs of our service users and ensure they have the support they need. Our development work also helps us to identify needs that aren’t being met, help community groups to develop appropriate services, and to give support to isolated Black Carers in the community.

We offer advice on a range of matters from housing and benefits to health and social care. Support group meetings are held each month, including trips and events, and our incredible Care Attendant Service allows Carers to have some time away from their caring role. We also support our service users by signposting them to other helpful organisations.

BBC not only engages with adult carers but also works with young carers. BBC come across young people who have a vast amount of caring responsibilities but their family will not seek help as they are scared of their community finding out as they feel they will look down upon them because in their culture the children are supposed to take care of their elders. We work closely with families and they learn to trust us as a confidential service. If our organisation was not accessible to them for any reason they would be deeply affected not only mentally but socially as well.

We work with young carers to develop their confidence, boost their self-esteem through a youth group, workshops, one to one work, advocacy and sign posting. We help the young carers to develop social skills and give them a break from their caring responsibilities through trips and events. Bristol Black Carers support young carers by empowering their physical, intellectual, emotional and social development which otherwise would be severely affected possibly causing problems for them later on in life.

Bristol Black Carers is particularly valuable to Bristol as we target harder to reach groups within the community who otherwise would not access support and services. Recent research suggests BME carers are the hardest to reach and identify due to factors such cultural and language barriers and isolation. We tackle and break down these barriers by forming partnerships with numerous organisations, schools, faith groups and different cultural and community groups. These partnerships enable us to provide an excellent service and remain an outstanding organisation in Bristol.