Make your voice heard
This new area on our website has been created to help carers support each other and work together to get their views heard.
This may include setting up petitions about the issues that you think are important, finding out about campaigns set up by carers, sharing your thoughts and ideas and starting new inititatives.
Find out what your MP is doing for you
Stay informed about what is happening in Westminster and keep tabs on what your elected MP is doing. You will find links to speeches and written answers, organised by date, topic or MP and you can add your comments to individual speeches.
For news on parliamentary business specific to Scotland, visit the Scottish Parliament Homepage.
Create or support E-Petitions
Instead of presenting your petition at the door of No 10 Downing Street, this site was set up to allow any UK citizen to create and sign up to petitions online. It also provides an opportunity for No 10 to respond to petitioners via email.
You can search the existing petitions - some examples are given below (with the deadline to sign up by in brackets):
- Access to drugs for Alzheimer's disease (10 January 2008)
- We Need to Talk (October 2007)
- Continuing Care (August 2007)
Many of the caring-related petitions can be found by selecting 'view petitions', then 'health, well being and care', although there are many subjects which may interest you.
Chat with Sheila Dent, UK Director of Policy and Operations at The Princess Royal Trust for Carers
Sheila Dent recently took part in an online hosted chat to to meet carers and hear your views. The transcript of this discussion is available to read through in our Archive of hosted chats.
Carer's campaign: write for your rights
Many of you will have sent individual letters to your MPs - an essential way of expressing your views and drawing attention to your personal circumstances. One of the carers in our online community, Cheryl (aka 'Cheryl the Peril' on the discussion boards) decided to take this one step further and create a standardised letter for MPs. This letter was posted on our discussion boards and was developed by contributions from carers.
This joint letter was put together entirely by carers to make their feelings known about key issues of concern to all carers, such as Carers Allowance, respite care, pensions and so on. The letter generated interest across forums on several different carer's websites and the letters were sent out on 21 June 2007.
You can view Cheryl's letter and the discussion here:
Did you receive a response from your letter? Why not let others know here:
If you'd like to find out more about Cheryl and the background to her initiative, she was interviewed by Carers UK - read Cheryl's interview.