What is BTG?
Bridging The Gap (BTG) is NEWCIS’ respite scheme that provides you with a short period of rest from your caring role. A short break from your caring role could include attending a personal appointment, a NEWCIS event or socialising with friends. If you care for someone living in Denbighshire, Flintshire or Wrexham, you could be eligible to access the award-winning scheme.
Eligibility criteria
- You are caring for someone living in Denbighshire, Flintshire or Wrexham
- You are registered with NEWCIS
- You have had a Carers Need Assessment / What Matters Conversation in the past 12 months
The process
You have identified that you, as a carer, would benefit from NEWCIS’ Bridging The Gap scheme. So, what happens next?
- You will be allocated a NEWCIS Wellbeing Officer who will complete a Carer Assessment with you (if you have not already had one)
- If you meet the criteria you can then choose a provider you would like to use and contact them to ensure that they have capacity
- Once you have agreed with the provider, contact your wellbeing officer at NEWCIS so that they can complete the referral for you to access the scheme
- A letter of confirmation will be sent to you by NEWCIS which will include your allocation code. You must quote this code to the provider when using their service. The code is valid for six months from the issue date. Any unused hours will be reallocated to another carer
Care providers
The list of providers are available upon request – please contact us and we will email/post this to you.
Family Support Grant
The BTG Family Grant can be used to help with costs for a family member to come to you and offer support. This could be travel costs for a family member to travel to your home to provide help with practical tasks such as shopping, cleaning, cooking, walking the dog or general caring duties. Or NEWCIS can fund for days out, meals and travel fares for a family member to take your cared for out for the day to provide you with some respite.
Contact us for more information! We’d need to know: the number of days you will require family support, estimated travel costs, how many meals you will need to provide your family member, if they’ll be any day trip expenses and if you would be able to photograph receipts and forward these to us.
If you wish to reapply for the scheme again after the six months are up, providing you still meet the criteria and NEWCIS still have funding available, you will be reissued a new allocation code. Please note that the scheme is in high demand and can sometimes hold a waiting list. All listed agencies and providers are quality monitored via the council under the North Wales Domiciliary Care Agreement.