Helping unpaid carers to catch a break after the pandemic

After being forced to cease operations for the majority of 2020 & 2021, Carefree has turned the pandemic into a pivotal period for the charity.

With 5 members of staff covering multiple aspects of product development, service delivery and partnership work with much larger, complex organisations we succeeded in securing the volume of accommodation donations required to ensure that thousands of unpaid carers could access a break when restrictions lifted. Leveraging £4m of gifts on a budget of £357,000. From May 2021 - April 2022 new corporate partnerships were forged with Axiom Hospitality, Bespoke Hotels, Coaching Inn Group, Cycas Hospitality, 4C Hotels, The Q Hotel Collection, Sleeperz Hotels & Village Hotels who are collectively offering c2000 nights per month across 129 properties in England, Scotland and Wales on Carefree's platform. It also won 2022 Best Digital Innovation BC Award for its partnership with Impala, to connect its breaks hub with their open room distribution API so that any property on Booking.com can release rooms to Carefree with just a few clicks. Since re-launch on 10 Nov 2021, we’ve serviced over 4000 platform users and over 1000 nights have been booked by unpaid carers - with 94% seeing an improvement in their wellbeing.