Celebrating carers and offering them support

WE’RE in Carers Week this week. If you look after someone in your family or your neighbourhood on an informal unpaid basis, then you are a carer.

That person may have mental health needs, they may have physical or memory problems requiring help, or they may just have many more years behind them than ahead of them.

You don’t need to be doing this full-time, just pretty regularly.

And you may be married to them, or be part of the immediate family, or indeed their only relative left.

Or you may have a generous heart and look out for friends and neighbours who have noone else. You are a carer for them, but nevertheless you have your own life to juggle too.

You may have your own family, job and health issues to contend with.

This week celebrates you and offers support if needed.

There are 5.7 million carers in the UK. And while many would not begrudge their care one bit, it is not always easy. Many carers feel, at least at times, exhausted, isolated, overlooked and under-rated.

Yet of course, society would be much the poorer without them. Maybe you are feeling this way at the moment?

Many of the carers support teams and charities are right behind you this week (and actually all the time).

They have various events running and advice to give, so do get in touch with Carers UK, Age UK, Carers Trust, Rethink Mental Illness for starters.

Other disease-specific charities are also there to support, like the Alzheimer’s Society, Versus Arthritis and many more.

You can find out more about benefits, equipment, facilities, groups and social clubs.

Also advice on legal and financial matters and what your local social care team may have to offer. If carers become ill or exhausted, the whole system falls down. So even if you don’t feel you need help now, it’s worth thinking about contingency plans before a crisis hits.

Who could step in? Where would you ask for help? Have you got contact numbers and a list of what needs doing? What medications are they on? How do they take their tea or coffee?

It’s likely no-one knows them half as well as you do. Thank you so much for what you do.

You are a carer for them, but nevertheless you have your own life

to juggle too.