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Carers in Bedfordshire

This Knowledge Transfer Voucher (KTV) aimed to:

  • scope and develop an evaluation framework for Carers in Bedforshire (CiB)’s services
  • help CiB implement the recent NICE guideline on Supporting Adult Carers locally
  • facilitate the exchange of expertise and insights between CiB staff and OU academics around researching care and caring, policy implementation, research knowledge and practitioners’ knowledge

Our engagement uncovered a research project CiB were keen to engage with, which resulted in a bid to Dunhill Med Trust to evaluate acoustic monitoring for patients living in their homes and their informal carers. This successful project gave us an excellent opportunity to get to know each other better and identify mutual interest areas to continue working as partners.

It was wonderful to work with Jitka and her colleagues. Having an academic perspective enabled us to generate a meaningful research proposal that, if successful will greatly support our organisations mission to better unpaid carers’ lives.Chris Stelling
CEO Carers in Bedfordshire.

Carers in Bedfordshire’s needs

CiB help unpaid carers of all ages, right across Bedfordshire, with information, support and advice. The Open University (OU) helped CiB to become more research-active in order to:

  • ensure that their services to carers are effective and cost-effective; providing the best value for charitable funding
  • demonstrate the value of carer support services to statutory health and social care colleagues
  • give a diverse community of carers an active voice in the direction and development of new services

We applied for a research project that would benefit both organisations

The Knowledge Transfer Voucher Project

The OU team, Dr Jitka Vseteckova, Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies; Prof Mary Larkin and Dr Sandy Fraser, met and collaborated virtually with CiB staff and Trustees to discuss the best ways forward, understand CiB’s vision and decide how to best help CiB deliver the objectives.

A joint bid was submitted to Dunhill Med Trust as result of these discussions, led by Prof Keith Attenborough in the Faculty of Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics, and the team created a plan of how to continue working together in the future.

This project was an an excellent opportunity to get to know each other and work with Chris Sttelling, Phil Taverner and other great colleagues at CiB. We have also identified several areas of work we are keen to pursue in the future as partners.The Open University’s Dr Jitka Vseteckova
Project Lead

Project benefits

The OU project team:

  • scoped the work and developed a proposal to evaluate monitoring of carers and people they care for in their own homes, trying to prevent re-admissions to hospital, monitoring signs of distress, to enhance early diagnosis and prevent a build up to crisis
  • discussed the NICE guideline on Supporting Adult Carers locally
  • facilitated the exchange of expertise and insights around researching care and caring, policy implementation, research knowledge and practitioners’ knowledge
  • acted as a conduit to access other OU resources, e.g. learning opportunities for carers through linking to the Carers’ Research Group
  • prepared a joint bid to Dunhill Med Trust

About Carers in Bedfordshire

CiB knows that people who care for a family member or friend often put their own well-being last. Since 2004, CiB have been helping unpaid carers of all ages, right across Bedfordshire, with information, support and advice and giving a voice to their concerns.