According to a new post on The Princess Royal Trust for Carers (Apparently 40% of us with a caring responsibility…. | The Princess Royal Trust for Carers http://www.carers.org/community/blog/apparently-40-us-caring-responsibility) many carers in their first year don’t recognise that they are carers. The author carolm_12582 recalls that in the early days she was trying hard to recapture as much of their life following her husband’s stroke and that meant concentrating on the relationship of husband and wife not patient and carer. I think the use of her language is key here. Are professionals – through the use of their medicalised language – disabling people and therefore adding to the need for ‘caring’? And is our use of language preventing people from accessing help and support?
I remember one moment in Andy’s time in rehab where I was being shown what was involved in helping him shower and shave and so on….,’of course you’ll be doing x,y,z, for him’, they said. And what did I say, with not so much as a chip on my shoulder but an entire row of Harry Ramsdens,, ‘I’m his wife, not his nurse!’ They must have loved me! To my credit, what I was aiming to do was to genuinely help him with these things, as opposed to doing it for him: I did, and it worked, in that the first time it took about forty minutes; the second thirty, and, guess what, now he does it on his own.
I have been supporting those caring for someone with severe and/or enduring mental health problem for the last 8 years and it that time I have seen people trying to cling to the relationship that existed before the onset of illness. The process of acceptance of loss is an individual journey that is often unsupported by society and even friends and family. Many are reluctant to adopt the tag ‘carer’; they are mother, father, wife, husband, sister, brother, daughter, son. And in amongst all this anguish many people continue without support (some for years) because society’s term ‘carer’ doesn’t mean anything to them.
The author very clearly states that her assumptions about what she was or wasn’t entitled too prevented her from accessing support. Too often it has taken a situation to reach crisis point before people access services and help.
I have often advocated to those caring to accept the term carer and then use it to access services, participate in decision making and to seek others in a similar role. The term is not perfect – being often confused with a professional carer – but its the one we’ve got. What should be a priority for professionals is early identification of those in a caring role by promoting awareness and championing carers across society. After all anyone of us may be become a carer or a cared for.
