Meeting with carers in Stad Aalst
In For Care partner Stad Aalst has recently started to meet citizens at the Care Front Office, to define if they are informal carers and to assess their needs.
Carers are persons who provide care (usually unpaid) to someone with a chronic illness, disability or other long lasting health or care need, outside a professional or formal employment framework.
Carers often don't think of themselves as such, because they consider it natural for example to take care of their child with special needs, their frail, elderly parent or neighbour. That makes it difficult to collect reliable figures about the numbers of carers, and to identify their needs.
This also makes it difficult to develop targeted interventions.
With the information gained from meeting the citizens at the Care Front Office, Stad Aalst wants to work together with care organisations to innovate in the public service delivery towards informal carers.