Joshua (18) is balancing study with minding his sister
EIGHTEEN year-old Joshua Porter from Francis Street has a lot going on. As the Covid-19 crisis hit, he was in the middle of studying for his Leaving Cert, something which he was putting a lot of work into in the hopes of studying law in Trinity.
Three years ago, Joshua lost his dad, well-known osteopath Mark Porter, in tragic circumstances and since then it’s been him, his mum Ann and little sister Isobel (10). While the build-up to exams can be stressful enough, Joshua has been facing a host of other pressures since Covid-19 hit.
Mum Ann works for the HSE and is deemed an essential worker. In the absence of any government provisions for childcare for frontline workers, it effectively means that Joshua is responsible for his little sister while his mum is at work, as well as trying to study whenever he can.
‘He says to me that he has two major worries,’ said mum Ann. ‘One is his Leaving Cert and what will happen and the other is me going out into the workplace and that I’ll get sick.’
As Ann is type one diabetic, there are risks posed if she contracted the virus and the condition has landed her in ICU on previous occasions. Understandably, having lost his father so young, this is a source of anxiety for Joshua, whom his mother just can’t praise enough.
‘He’s an amazing young man,’ she said. ‘He’ll sit with Isobel and do her homework with her, read with her, go down and do some shopping for me, bring his little sister out for walks, and clean the house so that I don’t have to do it in the evening. Then, as well as this, he’s trying to keep up on study as well because we just don’t know what will happen with the Leaving Cert.’
‘Really, it’s not acceptable that an 18-year-old has to shoulder this much pressure. He can’t actually study like he needs to because he’s minding his little sister while I’m at work. He’s had to pick up the pieces of a failed system which fails to take into consideration families like ours where there’s only one parent and they are deemed an “essential worker”. I would say it’s not good enough. If the government want essential workers who are single parents to go out and work, then they need to provide childcare for them.’
In the meantime, Joshua has been a real godsend for his mother. While he continues to hit the books where possible, he continues to anxiously watch the news awaiting confirmation of the fate of Leaving Cert students. On Friday it was announced that the Leaving Cert will be postponed until ‘late July or August’ meaning that things are still somewhat up in the air.
Ann said: ‘Given what he’s already been through in losing his father, he’s put in an amazing amount of work already and going by his predicted grade, hopefully he’ll be on target to do what he wants to do.’