Since April 2025, we have been involved in a West Yorkshire programme that shines a spotlight on unpaid carers, strengthens the services available to them, and brings together partners across the region who share a commitment to making a real difference.
Below is an overview of the fantastic initiatives taking place, as well as showing how your organisation and the people you support can access them.
What is the Accelerating Reform Fund?
The Accelerating Reform Fund (ARF) is a £42.6 million grant-funded programme launched by the Department of Health & Social Care in 2023. The goal was for the Adult Social Care sector to develop or build on existing initiatives. The fund required local authorities to form a consortium and deliver a minimum of two projects. At least one had to be focused on supporting unpaid carers.
The West Yorkshire Consortium
In 2024, a partnership including the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, alongside the five regional Local Authorities and five VCSE carers organisations, was awarded £1.5 million to develop their two proposed projects to support unpaid carers (Carers Breaks & Digital Support). A project board was formed with representatives from each of the organisations where the need for project management was identified. With capacity issues within both the ICB and local authorities, it was decided that this would best be placed with a VCSE infrastructure organisation. Their impartiality and knowledge of the system, as well as experience of working across sectors and regions, were considered as benefits for supporting the work.
Volition submitted an expression of interest and was contracted to support the projects from April 2025 initially until September 2026. This has been extended for a further 6 months until March 2027 in line with the extension of a number of the projects.
Carers Breaks Project
In April 2025, Carers Leeds was awarded a contract to deliver a two year project that focused on providing unpaid carers with the opportunity to take breaks away from their caring responsibilities. Breaks are donated from local leisure and tourism businesses (Giving Partners) across the West Yorkshire region, and in June 2025 The Caring Kind Project was launched.
The five VCSE Carers organisations in the region, act as delivery partners on the project, matching carers to breaks that meet their needs, as well as providing wider carer support. As of January 2026 there are approximately 600 breaks donated from giving partners and available for carers in West Yorkshire to access free of charge.
To refer any unpaid carers to the project or for more information on giving or delivery partners, please visit The Caring Kind Project Website or contact Carers Leeds on 0113 3804300.
Digital Support Project
1.
Carers UK was contracted for 2 years in April 2024 to adapt their national digital resource for carers, and in July 2024 launched the West Yorkshire digital resource platform. The platform is accessible 24/7 by unpaid carers across West Yorkshire and provides a range of resources to support carers to manage their caring responsibilities. The resource also includes dedicated regional pages with relevant local information, determined by the carers locality.
Following a review, use of the platform was extended for a further 12 months as a result of consistent increased engagement.
Carers across West Yorkshire can access the resource by visiting the Carers UK website and creating an account using the code: WESTYORKS
2.
The Carers UK Employers for Carers (EfC) platform offers practical tools and resources to support managers to better understand and support working carers in their teams. Additionally, working carers within organisations can also access the resources which are aimed at helping them to manage their work and caring responsibilities.
The Accelerating Reform Fund (enabled the West Yorkshire ICB to purchase a 2 year membership (starting April 2025) and subsequently share this across the West Yorkshire Local authorities and NHS organisations. Additional benefits of the membership allow local authorities to further share a curated version of the platform tailored to support small organisations and employers across their area, providing free, 24/7 access to the online platform.
Organisations in Leeds can access the resource via Leeds City Council by registering an account on the EfC website using code: #EFC1943.
View the poster to find out more information.
For any further information on the resources provided by Carers UK on behalf of this project, please email [email protected]
3.
Various digital inclusion initiatives were developed across the West Yorkshire region led by each of the five VCSE carers organisations. Support services include training sessions, online support groups, equipment hire, digital skills coaching and Sim card/ data set-up etc.
As Carers Leeds already had an established digital inclusion programme to identify those who were digitally excluded, their focus for this 2 year project as of January 2025 has been on digital outreach:-
- To identify digitally confident carers who don’t currently access face to face or telephone information, advice and support.
- To reach more diverse carers with digital information, advice and support.
- To help digitally confident carers manage their caring responsibilities and mitigate the negative impact of caring.
- To improve the wellbeing of digitally confident carers.
In January 2026, all digital inclusion initiatives across the region (as part of this ARF project) were extended for a further 12 months. Carers Leeds outreach work will therefore continue until December 2027.
Further information on the Carers Leeds digital outreach service can be found on their website, or by contacting them on 0113 380 4300.
