Carers Project
Project Title: Improving health, wellbeing and socio- economic condition of family carers of persons with disabilities in Savar sub-district – Bangladesh.   
Supported by: Carers Worldwide
Activities under the CDD`s carers project for carers of persons with disabilities, these are pioneering activities for carers in Bangladesh. Through the baseline survey, CDD and Carers Worldwide have identified the core components of the carer and the need for their wellbeing. Carers as valuable resources, whose experiences can be meaningful to create community awareness, fight stigma and self-help has emerged as an important finding.  The fact that carers need to be supported and nurtured through many programs for their own wellbeing, alongside those for their disabled family member.
The activities with carers is now recognized, supported and hope there is plan to share their experiences in the national and international forums along with the carer. Carers project staff and the coordinators of CDD have taken meticulous attention in understanding the project goal, process, collecting the data and maintaining individual records of the carers.
It is hoped that by adding to the evidence base on carers’ needs, the ongoing activities with carers will assist scaling up the carers inclusion in Bangladesh, and also in attracting the attention of other NGOs, INGOs and government agencies, because of caregiving is a dynamic, multi-layered, multidimensional lifelong process, which requires role adaptations and skill acquisition by the families. 
The activities with carers of persons with disabilities is based on a model developed by Carers Worldwide. Carers model layout is below- 

Above the Carers model has five elements, (1) Carer support groups, which create social networks and emotional support, (2) Improved access to services for mental and physical health, including counselling, (3) Respite for carers through provision of quality alternative support for the cared for people, (4) access to education or gainful employment for carers which is compatible with their caring responsibilities, including training and access to jobs and (5) training for carers to become able to advocate for their needs at local, regional and national level. 
These interventions operate at two levels.  Firstly, they improve the wellbeing and economic security of individual carers and their families and secondly, they bring about systemic change for carers through improved services and policy from local to national level.
 
Based on the carers model, ongoing project activities with the carers which is covered, 502 carers are included in the carers Self help groups, 320 carers are received support for the livelihood activities and increased their household incomes, 238 carers and 78 children received medical support / health services including follow health services at their doorsteps level and the vital role they are playing for the cared for individuals. Setup community caring centre at community level where carers and their children are meet together and enjoying their time, which is offering a break from caring reasonability.