The me you don’t see

What life is really like working as a carer…

It’s a frosty early morning as I skip breakfast and head to my car. I pull my phone out of my pocket and look to see which client I’m visiting first. On a typical day I’ll complete six to nine different visits depending on people’s needs, but a call can last anywhere from 15 minutes to seven hours. No one day is the same with my work.

Shortly afterwards, I arrive at the home of an older couple. They aren’t challenging, they just don’t want to admit that they need a little bit of help. The husband has vertigo, and his wife has been in and out of care homes and hospitals, so now they’re home they really want to be independent.

One of the jobs I’m meant to do for them is make breakfast, but as I walk through the door cereal, bowls, fruit and cutlery are already on the table. All I want is to help, so I go about the rest of the jobs on their list all while making polite conversation. They don’t want to chat, but that’s OK.

I head off to my next client. It’s a busy day – my company is struggling with staffing shortages, and a lot of carers are leaving to go to other employers. What people don’t realise is I care for people in their late 20s and early 30s all the way through to the elderly in need of palliative care. Some have poor mental health or learning difficulties and are simply in need of companionship. Others have MS, diabetes, dementia, stomas… the list is endless.

My next client is in her 50s and mentally she finds it very difficult to get anything done. Even simply taking a shower can feel like a huge task for her. It’s more of a companionship call, though, but today it’s a little different. She’s struggling to manage her young daughter, because it’s the half-term holiday.

Her daughter doesn’t have many friends, having just started at a new school again, and is finding it difficult to settle. So, I sit with her as she shows me how to play Animal

Crossing on the Nintendo Switch. After a while, I go to leave and the mother stops me, ‘I’ve not seen her this happy in a long time,’ she says. I smile, pleased I’ve made a difference.

Then I go to a call for palliative care. You don’t always know you’re giving end-of-life care; I lost a dementia patient unexpectedly last week. He was bed-bound and resisted care, always asking for his wife. One day he’d know me and the next he wouldn’t. He left his wife behind; they’d known each other since they were teenagers – it was so sad.

I then visit a guy with

MS and play Monopoly on his PlayStation as we argue about properties and the rent for Park Lane. He just needs a companion. I go to leave as it’s the end of my shift, but he stops me and says: ‘You’re an amazing carer.’ I drive home in tears – I get no recognition from higher management and sometimes I start to secondguess myself. It’s been a long day of bathing people, sorting medications and making

‘I drive home in tears – I get no recognition’

people comfortable. It’s not about the pay cheque for me; I work for moments like that, when I see I’ve made an impact on that person’s life.