It’s been a great start to 2022 for us as Carers Trust South East Wales. As we closed the doors on 2021, we knew that it would be a busy time when were returned in the new year but I’m not sure we quite anticipated it would be this busy – but in a good way.

This is an incredibly important year for us as an organisation. And we’re excited about what will be changing.

We will of course be continuing to provide the great support, resources, training and guidance to unpaid carers, as well as collaborating with partner support services and local authorities to give the best support to carers, young and old, new and experienced. It’s what we do, and what we love.

A clear vision

Our vision is to see unpaid carers looking after themselves, enjoying their life and achieving their goals, whilst helping a family member or friend to receive empowering care or support.

And for us to make that vision a reality we recognise that we need to change some of the ways we deliver our services. We need to reduce the postcode lottery around our service provision that many carers experience by standardising our offer across out operating area whilst maintaining flexibility to each area, we need to increase our use of technology to help people get more consistent access to support. And we need to be clearer about what we do and who we support so that people know how to make contact as soon as they can.

As well as us learning more about user centred service design and delivery to help us think about how we better design our services, we’re also excited to share that we will also be taking this opportunity to rename and rebrand to freshen up the way we look, feel and sound too.

Not a superficial change…

To help us with this we are delighted to share that over the next 8 weeks or so we will be working with a Cardiff based company called Design Dough to help us with our new name and brand.

It was really important to me that this isn’t just a superficial change but more an indicator that we were growing, improving, developing in who we are and the way in which we provide our services. It was important that we put both the people we support and our staff at the heart of this rebrand.

Over the next 8 weeks, we’re going to be sharing our journey toward our new look and feel, how we’re developing our new website and social media – there will be lots going on.

There won’t be any spoilers, but we thought it would be good to share the process with you, how we’re involving our people in the process and how Design Dough will be using that insight to help with the creative process.

But that’s just part of it.

We’d love your thoughts…

We’d love you to have a part in it too. If you’re reading this because you are a carer or have had a connection with us in the past, or are interested in the work that we do – we’d love your views. Tell us any ideas you have about what you think we should be called, how we should look what we should include on our website – and anything else we should be considering.

We’ve made a short and simple survey that will hopefully make sharing your views really easy.

So there we have it! By the 31st March, the Carers Trust South East Wales name will be no more and we’ll be excited to launch our new name, new look brand and new website too.

I look forward to sharing our rebrand journey with you. If you have any questions, please drop me a message!

Kieran.