A child of four should not have to act as carer

IT was the most heartbreaking image of the week. A schoolboy of 14 helping his mother to carry his dying little sister up and down the stairs. A boy whose life, since the age of four, has been devoted to his only sibling. A young lad making a lengthy trek to school each day, just so he can stay near his sister each night.

When she was just a year old, Elliot Walsh’s baby sister Jessica was diagnosed with a rare, terminal condition. Having been a normal, bright and babbly baby till then, Jessica suddenly deteriorated until she became, as her mother Lynn Marie explained, ‘an empty shell’.

Since he was a small boy, Elliot has helped with the care of his sister, who is now aged ten. He’s been ‘the man of the house’, his mother’s rock in their desperately sad plight. The single mother and her two children had been living in a lovely house in Kildare, thanks to the Housing Assistance Payments scheme, and doing their best to keep little Jessica at home as long as possible.

But the only bathroom was upstairs. At first, Lynn Marie and Elliot managed to carry Jessica up the steps together. The girl and her mum slept in the downstairs sitting room, and a paddling pool on the floor served as her bath. But she has now grown too heavy for the boy and his mother to manage, and she has been moved to Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, Dublin.

Elliot and Lynn Marie are living in the Ronald McDonald House, provided by the charity for the family of sick kids, to be near her and to make the most of the time the terminally-ill Jessica has left. They’re begging for a council house with a downstairs bathroom so they can take Jessica home to die, and ease the pressure on their small family.

Every morning, Lynn Marie and Elliot rise at 6.30am. She drives him out to school in Newbridge, Co. Kildare, and hurries back against the morning traffic to spend the day by Jessica’s bedside. Elliot gets off school a little early, so he can get the 4pm bus back to the Red Cow Roundabout where his mother collects him each day.

He is, his mum says, the most wonderful boy, uncomplaining, undemanding, endlessly helpful. Whatever she asks he does without a murmur. He adores his little sister, and can’t do enough for her. ‘He’s been her carer,’ Lynn Marie told Miriam O’Callaghan on RTÉ Radio this week, ‘since he was four years old.’ A child of four shouldn’t have to be the carer for his sick baby sister. A schoolboy shouldn’t be helping to carry his disabled ten-year-old sister up and down stairs. A lad facing into the Junior Cert shouldn’t need to undertake such a trek to get himself to and from school every day. You couldn’t help but pity Lynn Marie when she wept and said she had no choice but to go public with her plight.

But neither could I help but wonder about the contribution those children’s father is making. He was never mentioned in the interview, perhaps because the role of the fathers of such desperate children is the one question that nobody dares to ask.

IT is not a question that should be asked out of prurience. The nature of his relationship with the children’s mother is irrelevant. As a single mother myself, I have zero interest in questioning single-parenthood. But from a public policy perspective, we as a State and as a society need to understand in such cases what contribution that father is making.

The reason that this question matters is because every child has a right to be supported by both their parents. In any situation involving a single parent, surely society has a duty to ensure that both parents are doing whatever they can for that child’s welfare.

That is quite separate from questions of access or custody: it is simply the responsibility that every person takes on when he or she becomes a parent.

In the UK, they have wisely separated that parental responsibility from questions of custody or access, which are left to the courts. The State simply requires every non-custodial parent (usually the fathers) to make a financial contribution – even if they are unemployed.

That’s why in every case such as this we need to ask the question: ‘What contribition is the father making?’

It’s not because we care two hoots about a parent’s relationship status: it’s because we can’t help people properly without first knowing the facts.