For Carers Week (9^th – 15^th of June), we recorded a podcast with the Ombudsman Association to discuss our latest own initiative investigation, ‘Are we caring for our carers?’. An own initiative investigation means that we can investigate matters, where we have a reasonable suspicion of widespread maladministration or service failure by public bodies in Wales, even if we have not received a complaint about it from an individual. This latest investigation focuses on the administration of carers’ needs assessments in Wales, and how there is often inconsistent support offered across the investigated authorities.

In the podcast, we discuss:

• Why we focused on unpaid carers
• How system failures impact carers
• Recommendations made to public bodies to improve their processes
• Why we need to better support unpaid carers

You can listen to the podcast here.