We Care Campaign wins national campaigning award from UK Parliament

On Tuesday 2nd April, Katy Styles and the We Care Campaign team arrived at Westminster to collect the UK Parliament’s Digital Campaigner of the Year.

2019 marks the second year of the Your UK Parliament awards. The winning entries were chosen by the Speaker of the House of Commons, and a judging panel of MPs, Peers and independent judges. All of the winners attended an awards ceremony hosted by the Speaker in the Houses of Parliament.

The Rt. Hon John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, said:

Katy Styles ©UK Parliament_Mark Duffy

“There is nothing more inspiring than hearing how these winners used so many innovative ways to get people more involved and connected with UK Parliament. This year’s awards have shone a light on this amazing work – and will hopefully encourage others to join the campaign.”

We Care Campaign is an ongoing campaign to get a better deal for the UK’s 7 million unpaid carers. It is led by carers, for carers. Carers are a hard to reach group as they often feel too tired, too isolated and disempowered to take part in campaigning.

We Care undertook 3 digital activities. Katy ran an e-petition calling on government to publish a Carers’ Strategy. The petition obtained 2,124 signatures. We Care also encouraged unpaid carers to take part in a twitter #AsktheMinister question session to the Minister for Social Care, Caroline Dinenage. We then used our own @WeAreCarers account to host Barbara Keeley, the Shadow Minister, enabling carers to ask more than one politician the same questions during Carers Week. We Care organised a Valuing Carers digital event where decision makers, carers and the cared for posted messages of support for unpaid carers during Carers Rights Day.

We Care Team with Mr Speaker Bercow ©UK Parliament_Mark Duffy

We Care Campaign’s activities made a massive difference and impact on our target audience of unpaid carers who took part in our campaign actions. Individual carers took part in digital actions which helped organise a real grassroots campaign. We Care worked hard to utilise every contact made, by replying to every single contact individually. An unpaid carer speaking of one of our digital takeovers said, “Normally we get a bit of cake and bunting for Carers Rights Day. This is so much more than that. It’s not been done before.” We equally made an impact on individual decision makers, within parliament and beyond and have built a strong network, enabling us to reach more carers in 2019.

Katy Styles who led the campaign said,

“We Care want to thank you so much for a special day in Parliament. Engaging with Parliament at this time in a positive way has never been so important and we have loved playing a small part in this.” fff

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