Carers Week is a UK-wide annual awareness campaign. Its aim is to improve the lives of carers and the people they care for. It does this by:

• Raising the profile of the role of caring in the national, regional and local media and encouraging groups and organisations to take part and organise events and activities.
• Helping the public identify themselves as carers and access the support, advice and information they need.
• Celebrating and recognise the contribution the UK’s 6.4 million carers make to the people they care for and their communities.
• Highlighting the challenges of caring and campaigning for sustainable funding for services and support for carers and the people they care for.

This year the theme for Carers Week is Prepared to Care? Every day at least 6,000 people start caring. Becoming a carer can impact significantly on a person’s life – it takes time, energy, can leave you isolated and can be costly.

Prepared to Care? – the 2013 Carers Week campaign –will focus on how the UK’s current carer population is coping, how effectively Government is supporting the growing numbers of carers, and whether the wider population is prepared for future caring responsibilities.

Through Prepared to Care? Carers Week will highlight the impact of caring on daily life and, with an ageing population and higher incidence of disability and serious illness, encourage the public to think whether they could manage a caring role.

Prepared to Care? will also help those already caring to make sure they are accessing all the practical and emotional support they need to care safely and look after themselves.

For more information on Carers Week, please click here.

Men's Health Week 2013: You only live once so talk to someone
10th - 16th June

Three in four people who kill themselves are men.

Led by the Men's Health Forum, this year's Men's Health Week runs from the 10th to 16th June and aims to tackle stigma in men’s mental health and promote mental well-being and help-seeking in men.

During the Week, the MHF will launch new services to enable men to access health advice and new publications to help health providers reach men. This follows the MHF's publication of the first guidelines on addressing the mental health needs of men and boys and our commitment to expanding and improving our services for men.

Why mental well-being?

• Despite men and women experiencing mental health problems in roughly equal numbers, men are much less likely to be diagnosed and treated for it and the consequences of this can be fatal – the MHF has long highlighted that 75% of all suicides are by men and that  73% of people who go missing are men.
• The Health & Social Care Information Centre 2009 household survey found that about 2.7 million men in England currently have a mental health problem like depression, anxiety or stress.
• Mind research has found that 37% of men are feeling worried or low with the top three concerns being job security, work and money.
• 33% of men are drinking at a potentially harmful level.

We are still assessing funding for free materials and the pricing for other resources, register to ensure you are the first to know what we have available. The more who register the more likely we will be able to offer free resources!

More info

This course draws on NCVO’s cutting edge thinking that has been developed from our strategy work with a range of charities over many years, to ensure that you keep your beneficiaries or cause at the heart of your future.

Day 1 is an introduction to strategy giving a theoretical focus.

Day 2 helps you put your learning into practice by making a meaningful strategy.

By the end of the two days, you will be able to:

• Identify what good strategy process involves
• Develop thinking about what strategy includes
• Participate in using  tools to create an effective strategy
• Design ideas about your organisation’s strategy process to take away
• Apply with confidence what you learn within your own organisation.

More info

Small Charity Week 2013 - 17th - 22nd June

Small Charity Week is a campaign which was first established by the Foundation for Social Improvement (FSI) in 2010 to celebrate and raise the profile of the small charity sector.

The week is organised as a series of activities and initiatives to support and raise awareness of the hundreds and thousands of small charities that, every day, make a huge difference to vulnerable communities right across the UK and the rest of the world.

The objectives of Small Charity Week are to:

• Celebrate the contribution that small charities make to communities throughout the UK and across the world
• Improve the knowledge, representation and sustainability of small charities
• Highlight the work of the small charity sector to the broadest possible audience
• Encourage public giving
• Work with the small charity sector to develop political engagement at a national and local level

More info

Raising Standards Of Compassion, Dignity and Safety

4th July; The Clarendon Suites, Birmingham

For more information and to book, please visit Public Service Events.

9th - 10th July 2013; Manchester Central Convention Complex, Manchester

Inclusion's annual Welfare to Work UK Convention and Exhibition is the premier event for employment, skills and tackling child poverty. 

Confirmed speakers include Mark Hoban MP, Minister for Employment; Neil Couling, Work Services Director, Department for Work and Pensions; and Kirsty McHugh, Chief Executive, Employment Related Services Association.

Our pre-convention brochure is now available for download.  Review this year's Convention key themes and find out more information about this year's new Market Place.

More info

For more information and to book, please visit Public Service Events.