Caring for someone with a mental health condition

What is the Mental Health Carers Support Service?

At Somerset Foundation Trust, we are committed to working to the triangle of care standards. We believe that for someone to make a successful and sustained recovery from mental health conditions, the patient, staff, families and carers must all work together.

The mental health carers support service specialise’s in supporting the carers of people who have mental health conditions. We do this by offering you a carers assessment as well as advice, information and support.

Here are some of the things we can support you with:

• advocacy and empowerment
• carers education sessions and workshops
• mental health carers groups (please see the poster link to the left for our most up to date groups)
• emotional support and a listening ear in times of brief crisis
• planning for emergencies
• carers support workers
• social events for carers
• referral to services who can provide further advice and support
• Being heard – Carers Involvement Group

The mental health carers support service is part of Somerset NHS Foundation trust and we work with carers supporting those under Somerset NHS Foundation Trust mental health services (or have been discharged within the last 6 months)

If you are supporting someone that does not meet that criteria you can get support for your caring role from Somerset Carers, the universal carers support service provided by Thrive.

Please scroll to the bottom of the page for a video summary of our service.

Together we will look at how the caring role impacts on your life as a carer and what support you might find helpful.

This is not an assessment of how well you care for your loved one.  The assessment is to make sure that someone is looking out for you.

During this conversation you may talk about, caring and how this affects your health, work, study, social activities, relationships and more.

We will ask about things such as how you look after yourself, your physical and emotional wellbeing.

At the end of the assessment, we will understand more about the things in your life that you enjoy, the things you would like to do less and more of, and the areas you need more support. We will provide information, advice, and may signpost you to other support and resources that are available to you.

Not everyone referred to our service will go on to have a full mental health carers assessment, as we may be able to give you the information, support and advice in our initial contact call or identify what might be helpful at first point of contact. You may be referred to our mental health carers support workers for some longer term support or signposted to the most appropriate service for information.

How you can access this service  

You can be referred by a professional or self-refer to access our services provided that the person you are supporting is known to Somerset NHS mental health services.

A self referral form can be found on the right hand side of this page.

The carers’ services team are based within community mental health teams across Somerset. The team can be contacted by telephone or email.

carers@somersetft.nhs.uk or 01749 836606 (please be aware this is a voicemail box, leave us a message and we will get back to you as soon as we can)

Waiting times  

You will be contacted within four weeks from accepting a referral or self-referral.

Somerset County Council

Under the Care Act 2014, all carers are entitled to a carer’s assessment. Care Act Carers Assessments are undertaken by Somerset County Council and you can request these by contacting adult social care on 0300 123 2224.

This is an opportunity to talk about how caring affects you and can go hand in hand with a care needs assessment for the person you care for.