Carers UK Adviceline 0808 808 7777

[Matt Hill]

Carers UK provides high quality advice and information to carers and the professionals who support carers. We do this through our website, information booklets and factsheets.

We also have a telephone advice line which is staffed by experts and has many years experience of dealing with the problems carers face. We provide free and confidential information and advice on:

* benefits and tax credits
* carers employment rights
* carers assessments
* the services available for carers, and how to complain effectively and challenge decisions.

Our freephone number is 0808 808 7777 and we are open on Wednesday and Thursday 10am -12pm and 2pm - 4pm.

You can email us at adviceline@carersuk.org

Please note that we are a small expert team and are often very busy. We will try to answer your email as soon as possible but we may not be able to do so on the same day.

If English is not your first language we can provide you with an interpreter and our advisers can also be contacted through typetalk.

Alternatively, you can write to us or send us a fax]http://www.carersuk.org/Information[/url]

[alfred turner]

what a great service

[Bridget Leech]

Thanks for the info.
Bridget Leech Carer Ambassador Derbyshire

[Matt Hill]

One of our members has asked this. It;'s a comonly asked question so I am posting reply here.

[quote]Re the Phoneline / Adviceline ]

Carers UK would love to open our Advice Line 7 days a week. Demand for the service is high - much more than we can deal with - and evaluation tells us that carers really value the service. Many carers end up financially better off after calling us. However attracting funding is difficult.

The Advice Line is a small team. We have two full time advisers and a manager and we also draw on the expertise found in our offices in Belfast and Cardiff. As well as answering the phone, the team also deal with hundreds of emails and are also responsible for making sure all Carers UK's written information is correct.

Because we know each carers' situation is different all our advice is tailored to the individual. We do not read from scripts like some generic helplines might do. This means that sometimes an individual call might in fact lead to several lengthy phone calls between adviser and carer, to get all the facts and advise the right course of action. This is obviously time consuming. But we do not want to lower the quality of what we do.

For all these reasons the advice line hours are sadly limited. The rest of the week when the line is closed our advisers are still on the phone to carers, but they are dealing with following up calls, messages and emails.

We understand how frustrating this is. We have fundraising staff who are constantly seeking new sources of funding for the advice line so we can recruit more staff and increase the service. We're very proud of our advice service and wish we could expand it.

Even though the hours are limited please call. If you leave a message or send an email - someone will get to back to you. All calls are dealt with in date order and you will be seen.

Matt Hill
Communications Manager

[Robert]

Matt, many thanks for your reply to my query. I note what you say. However, I am of the view that a national phone service / advice line that is only actually open to receive calls for eight hours a week is not doing its job as well it might. Is this purely a funding issue or more to do with priorities within Carers UK ? What would it take to be more accessible ? Is there something that members can do to help with this ?

Thanks again.

Robert