About the Supporting Carers in General Practice programme

The Supporting Carers in General Practice elearning programme has been developed for primary care professionals, to help them to support people who care for others. It has been developed by the Royal College of General Practitioners, in partnership with the Princess Royal Trust for Carers and with support from The Children’s Society. The programme contains six elearning sessions:

1. Supporting those who provide care for other people
2. Identifying carers
3. Organising your practice to support carers
4. Supporting young carers
5. Support for older people and their carers
6. Supporting the carers of people with challenging problems

Please spend three minutes looking at the video below from Clare Gerada, previous Chairman of the Royal College of GPs, on five simple ways GPs can make a difference for carers.

More information

Why supporting carers matters

A carer is someone who provides support to a partner, child, relative, friend or neighbour who could not manage without this help. This could be due to age, physical or mental illness, addiction or disability.

On any practice patient list, one in ten people is a carer, with 22% of those carers performing caring duties for more than 50 hours every week. It is estimated that at least 175,000 carers in the UK are children. Carers underpin our social care system within the UK. With an ageing population, the role of the carer is ever more vital to our society. However, although many carers enjoy their caring role and want to continue caring, there is evidence to suggest that they suffer physical, psychological and social consequences as a result of their caring role.

Carers are more likely to have seen their GP recently than any other support professional. It is vital for GPs within primary care teams to know how to identify and support carers in order to maintain the health of the carer, and to preserve the care giving situation.

How to access

In order to access the Supporting Carers in General Practice programme, you will need an elfh account. If you do not have one, then you can register by selecting the Register button below.

Register >

To view the Supporting Carers in General Practice programme, select the View button below. If you already have an account with elfh, you will also be able to login and enrol on the programme from the View button.

View >

NHS healthcare staff in England

The Supporting Carers in General Practice programme is also available to NHS healthcare staff via the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). Accessing this elearning via ESR means that your completions will transfer with you throughout your NHS career.

Further details are available here.

Not an NHS organisation?

If you are not an NHS health or care organisation and therefore do not qualify for free access elfh Hub, you may be able to access the service by creating an OpenAthens account.

To check whether or not you qualify for free access via OpenAthens, you can view the eligibility criteria and register on the ‘OpenAthens’ portal.

Registering large numbers of users

If you are a HR, IT or Practice Manager and would like to register and enrol large numbers of staff within your organisation for access onto the Supporting Carers in General Practice programme, please contact elfh directly.

Organisations wishing to use their own LMS

For HR departments wanting to know more about gaining access to courses using an existing Learning Management System please contact elfh directly to express interest.

More information

Please select the following link for more information on how to use the elfh Hub.