In Your Shoes - Stacey Clark

Carers week kicks off

National Carers Week 2017 kicks off today and my day starts with checking our social media pages and updating on what we have coming up this week that carers can get involved in.  Over the weekend the Rotary Club of Claverhouse were doing a 40 mile charity walk with the proceeds being donated towards our work with young carers.  Thankfully, despite the weather, they all survived with only a few cuts and scrapes to speak of!

I finish the day with a meeting with Daniel from DACC to finalise plans for the 123Lunch on the 28^th June.

Too many to do's!

The day starts with our weekly diary meeting which gives the four team managers, the opportunity to discuss what’s going in their own teams and across the Centre.

Then the rest of my day is all about finishing off things on my to-do-list!  We are involved in lots of community events over the summer, so mostly signing off designs for leaflets and promotional goods, which have been altered recently due to an ongoing re-branding exercise. Media releases also need to go out for events we have taking place over the next few days.  Luckily the office is quiet as most of our staff team are out meeting carers and disabled people, so I can crack on!

event day

In the office early this morning to get ready for today’s Carers Information Event which we are hosting as part of Carers Week.  We have 15 organisations/agencies coming to C Gate to promote the services they offer to support and inform carers.  That means a lot of set up, but luckily we have a great reception team who do most of the hard work for me!

Before the event, I have my weekly team ‘huddle’ where we discuss what’s happened in the previous week and what the priorities are for the week ahead. 

The afternoon is all go, with lots of people coming to the event at C Gate, to get information which could help them manage their caring role and plan for the future.

what's everyone else up to?

Thursday starts with a quick de-brief with the reception team to check everything with well with the event yesterday.  We also hire out rooms in C Gate for meetings, training and conferences, so I had a catch up with the team to see what external bookings we have over the coming weeks.

Then I’m deskbound to prepare for some in-house staff training that is taking place over the coming weeks.  It also gives me the chance to have a look on-line and catch up with what other Carers Centres in Scotland are doing for Carers Week.

over for another year!

Friday usually means working from home in the morning and it always amazes me how much you can get through in a few hours with no interruptions! We have the launch of ‘Carers Blethers’ tomorrow, which hopefully will become a regular group, bringing together carers from across Dundee to speak about their experiences of being a carer.  I spend some time promoting the event online and also looking at the analytics for our social networking sites to measure our impact and reach for the week. 

And that’s Carers Week over for another year.  It’s been fun!