Crossroads Caring for Carers Isle of Man

A carer is someone of any age who provides unpaid support to family or friends who could not manage without this help. This could be caring for a relative, partner or friend who is ill, frail, disabled or has mental health or substance misuse problems.

Carers may even be juggling paid work with their unpaid caring responsibilities at home. The term carer should not be confused with a care worker, or care assistant, who receives payment for looking after someone.

If you are a carer, your local Carers’ Centre may be able to help make things easier for you. Each centre delivers a wide range of local support services to meet the needs of carers in its community.

Crossroads Caring for Carers Isle of Man provides carers with respite whilst providing meaningful care to those they look after.  At present our schemes include - 

Derby House Nursery, a playgroup and outreach scheme for children with care needs, allowing them to join in mainstream, playschool activities in an inclusive environment, whilst giving their parent carers a break and the opportunity to access employment and training.

Holiday Scheme, for children who are fully supported within school.  An opportunity to access school holdiay activities, helping parent carers to spend more time with other family members.

Young Carers, an activity group for carers under the age of 18 years who help to look after a family member, often a parent or sibling.

Building Bridges, this recently developed project provices a social group for young adults in transition from children's to adult's services and works on building self esteem, giving carers a regualar and sustained break through fostering independence.

Care At Home, a respite service providing a support worker to take over the caring responsibilities, giving the carer some time to themselves.

Social Club, a meeting place for 18-30 year olds with disabilities, activities inlcude cooking and karaoke!

Crossroads Community Venture, another recent development that provides work based training for adults with learning difficulties.  The trainees sell donated items on internet sites, to raise money for charity.  Through this and other tasks the trainees learn valuable employment skills and are supported into full time, part time and voluntary employment.  The overall aim is to help adults with learning difficulties to engage with the community and allow their carers to watch them flourish and develop.