The Princess Royal Trust for Carers in Hampshire is part of a network of 144 Carer Centres in the UK.  The network is co-ordinated by The Princess Royal Trust for Carers, founded by Princess Anne in Glasgow in 1991.

The Princess is actively involved with the Centres and attends functions to help with fundraising as well as conferences and educational events.  She has visited us in Winchester on several occasions.

Each centre is an independent registered charity established with help from the Trust and funded by local authorities, social services, primary care trusts and other organisations.

Winchester City Councillor Susan Glasspool set up the Winchester and Andover Carer Centre in 1994 when she was Mayor of Winchester, using the proceeds of her Mayor’s Charity Appeal.  Cllr Glasspool was Chair of the organisation for six years and remains a Director today.

We are governed by a voluntary Board of Directors, some of whom are or were carers.  The Board meets once a month and has responsibility for finance and strategy, although the day-to-day running of the Centre is the responsibility of the Chief Executive.

We have recently won the contract from Hampshire County Council to provide carers services across Hampshire and we have therefore changed our name to The Princess Royal Trust for Carers in Hampshire to reflect this.  This has meant we have had to increase our workforce considerably to cover the whole of the county and we now have 17 Carer Support Workers supported by administrative staff with a view to expanding and recruiting more workers as demand increases.

The work we do is varied and is tailored to the needs of each individual carer. Our focus is on giving carers accurate and up-to-date information on anything from disability aids to benefits claims. We also run special support groups, act as carers’ advocates, liaise with Social Services, GPs, hospitals and the Benefits Agency amongst others and offer free counselling to carers by way of qualified voluntary counsellors.

Hampshire County Council Adult Services also fund us to provide Mental Health Carer Support services in the Winchester, Andover and Eastleigh districts and we have funding from Hampshire Partnership NHS Trust to provide Mental Health Carer Support services at Melbury Lodge which is attached to the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester.

We also offer Emergency Planning for Carers where we help carers draw up their own emergency plan which will be activated should there be an emergency and the carer is unable to fulfil their caring role.

We have been granted funding to run the Alzheimer’s Café programme over the next two years which we launched in September 2009.

We administer some of the government’s Take A Break fund to enable carers to have respite as well as administering the respite funds for Rushmoor & Hart and East Hampshire districts.

We publish a free newsletter which is distributed to carers and professionals across Hampshire.