This project provided a timely opportunity to bring people together to consider the question: how do we promote collaboration rather than competition between informal and formal carers despite enduring structural limitations? Diverse partners working to improve support to unpaid carers in Scotland, Wales and the EU (via Eurocarers) wanted to work together to promote collaboration in practice and policy. Recognising escalating international challenges from poverty and inequality, climate change and shortages of staff in key jobs, the purpose was to explore how to mitigate increasing tensions emerging in relationships on the frontline of services.

The aim of the project was to inform more effective strategies to improve carer outcomes, through exchanging knowledge about changing relationships and integration between formal and informal care.

The objectives were to:

• provide an opportunity for participants to hear a range of types of evidence, including diverse stakeholder perspectives on the nature of caring and systems of care;
• use story and dialogue as tools to challenge normative assumptions about caring, and co-create new knowledge and insights;
• produce briefings and stories from different perspectives to influence and inform decision-making about caring in partner countries;
• develop further research questions and identify opportunities for further collaborative research.