Carers Week runs 8–14 June. The official theme is Building Carer Friendly Communities.
At Carents, we think building that community starts with carents talking to each other.
This year, across the week, we are running 14 free online sessions. Each one brings together a small group of carents to talk about one topic: the kind of topic that rarely gets the space it deserves in a GP surgery, a care assessment, or a family conversation.
What these sessions are
You can hear how other carents are navigating the same situation, ask questions, share what you have learned, and say things that can be difficult to say to people who have not been there.
These are not formal events, and there is nothing to prepare. Your experience is what the conversation needs.
One of our engagement team will be there to lead the discussion. Their job is to make sure everyone feels comfortable, heard, and able to contribute at their own pace. It is a small group, with no audience and no pressure.
Any key concerns and ideas that come up will be noted and fed back to the people and organisations who can act on them. We will ask at the start whether you are comfortable with anonymised themes from the conversation being included in our community insight notes: nothing will be attributed to you by name.
Why these six topics?
The six topics came from our Time to Talk fortnightly chats: conversations carents in our community have already been having with us. These are the themes that came up most so we are organising our Carers Week sessions around them so those conversations can go further.
Maintaining your livelihood
What has carenting cost you in time, money and career, and what would a proper safety net actually look like?
What health and care services don't understand
Where have services failed to see you clearly, and what would a genuinely carent-informed response look like?
What respite care should actually look like
The break you need: what does it look like, and where are the gaps?
Carenting from a distance, or from a rural area
The specific challenges of carenting when geography makes everything harder to access and harder to navigate.
The next generation and carenting
What do you know now that you wish someone had told you? What should the next generation of carents be able to expect?
Digital technology and innovation
What technology would change your situation right now, and who should be making it happen?
What happens in a session?
Each session is approximately 60 minutes on Zoom/Microsoft Teams. One of our engagement team will be there to lead: to keep the conversation flowing and make sure everyone gets a chance to be heard.
There is no agenda to read and no questions to prepare. You can sign up to as many sessions as you prefer and you will get a separate reminder for each one.
When are the sessions?
Sessions run across 8–14 June 2026, with morning, lunchtime, evening and weekend slots.
Register now
Registration is free and takes two minutes. Select the session or sessions you would like to attend and we will send you a confirmation with everything you need.
Questions? Get in touch at hello@carents.co.uk
