Professional referral for a carers assessment

In this guideline, a carer is an adult (aged 18 or over) who provides unpaid care and support to a family member, partner or friend (aged 18 or over) because of a disability, health condition, frailty, mental health problem, addiction or other health or social care need.

A Carer is someone who provides unpaid care, often alongside work or education for someone who otherwise couldn't manage without their help for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to age, illness, disability, addiction or poor mental health.

They may not live in the same house, and they do not have to be related to the person they look after.

Most Carers are willing to look after relations or friends, but sometimes they need extra support to continue in their caring role.

Caring for someone covers lots of different things, like Nursing Care, Domestic Tasks, Emotional Support, Managing Finances and many other types of support.

Carers will have many, if not all of the above responsibilities, often leaving little or no time to take care of themselves. Caring for a loved one is often an immensely rewarding and challenging role and we have developed this partnership strategy to help provide more support to Carers in Bolton.

Every unpaid Carer on Bolton whether past, present or future makes an invaluable contribution not only to the person they are caring for but also to their local community and Bolton as a whole.

There is no set number of hours to be considered a Carer as even a few hours can have an impact on the Carer's wellbeing.

We accept referrals for adults who are caring for somebody living in the Bolton borough

Anyone (a professional, a friend or family member, or the adult themselves) can make a referral to request a carers assessment.

Please make sure if you are completing the referral on behalf of someone else that you have their permission to share those details.

You will be required to create a portal account, or log in to an existing account, in order to complete and submit the form. Guidance on this can be found by clicking here.

Please provide as many details as possible about the situation you feel we could support with. Please describe:

• Your details
• Details of The Carer being referred
• Overview of circumstances of the Carer
• Details of Cared For

Doing this enables us to give your referral the correct priority. Without this information your referral could be delayed or you may be asked for more information which will require you to re-submit.

The form will take 10-15 minutes to complete depending on the amount of information you need to provide. Please be aware that for security reasons your session will timeout after 20 minutes of inactivity.

By accepting you give permission for Bolton Council to process your information and potentially share such data with Care related 3rd party organisations.