Crossroads Care Surrey is a charity which works across Surrey and offers a community based respite service to carers. The charity provides carers with one to one support from a professionally trained Care Support Worker in order to relieve their stress by enabling them to have a short break usually for 3 hours at a time. The scheme provides regular weekly, fortnightly, monthly visits and also provides overnight and occasional support to unpaid carers and the people they care for. The scheme aims to be flexible to the needs of the individual carers. A recent survey of our clients has shown that carers believe they are receiving a highly professional service from Crossroads Care Surrey and that they would more breaks.
Crossroads Care Surrey currently provides over 100,000hours of support to over 1500 carers in the county. To put this in context it is estimated that there are over 100,000 unpaid carers in Surrey. We work from 6 local branches throughout the country, each of which is registered and inspected by the Care Quality Commission.
Crossroads Care Surrey is affiliated to the national Crossroads Association and although autonomous the charity subscribes to the Association’s philosophies. Membership of the Association gives a policy framework to ensure compliance with legislation and National Care Standards.
The charity was launched in February 2009 following the merger of the 6 local Crossroads schemes in Surrey. Prior to the merger the 6 schemes had been operating for over 25 years in some cases.
Most of our service is free at the point of delivery. Statutory authority grants and contracts provide about 70% of our income of £2 million. The balance of the income comes from a variety of sources. We have recently employed a fund raiser and hope to reduce our reliance on the statutory sector. The next few years will be very challenging with the potential cuts in statutory funding and the change form grants to contracts which will go out to tender.
