Our digital community is growing – #carents
Our carents community is growing far beyond The Carents Room website and right across the digital community. We are currently building a broad community of carents and carenting related supporters and suppliers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Digital community of #carents on instagram
Given the demographic of carents we had expected to find more potential neighbours on Facebook but Instagram has proved to be our busiest digital community. Our instagram community is growing rapidly. That said, a significant proportion of referrals to thecarentsroom.com come from Facebook.
Digital community of #carents on Facebook
We have been exploring how to boost opportunities for peer support across our carent community. A key challenge on Facebook is the lack of anonymity. Some of you have messaged us to explain that friends and family can see what’s happening and what is said on Facebook and that creates a barrier to engaging publicly there.
Supporting carents’ wellbeing
These are key messages for us as we develop our plans to extend The Carents Room and explore the various options to provide more interaction and peer support and also to deliver our “carents’ wellbeing” package.
Those of you looking for inspiration and positivity might be interested in our “12 Cs of Carenting” series of Instagram posts. The series proved really popular and although we delivered it during advent with Christmas tree images, the messages and themes are timeless.
Products and services to help carents
You might also find it helpful to peruse our hundreds of Instagram followers – mostly either carers or suppliers of services or products which can improve carenting – to find additional sources of help. There are lots of accounts – individuals and experts – offering support with the daily challenges of caring, particularly #dementia care.
Instagram can also give you a rapid and global perspective on caring and services or products to support carers and disabled older adults. Americans seem to have developed a much wider range of carer support services than the UK. Presumably this reflects the different funding arrangements for health & social care in both countries.
We are still hunting for high quality innovative services and products which can help tackle some of the practical challenges of carenting. Again, notably, it is American rather than UK businesses which are more proactive in contacting us. If you have an innovation that can help our community then please do get in touch.
We’ve got a busy few months coming up – more content and more furniture – we will keep you posted here and on social media.