calling all unpaid carers...

[FluffBalled]

what you do is amazing, through no choice of your own you have ended up in a situation where you took on responsibility because it is the right thing to do.

You deserve more recognition, recompense and respect for your position in society. You are mostly women, often forgotten and generally ignored by the powers that be despite the enormous contribution you make to society.

Thank You!

Since it is Carer's Week and I have seen very little chat about that here, please try to make some time today (although you deserve so much more) to give yourself a pat on the back in the shape of

www.carersuk.org/

www.carersweek.org/about-us/advice-support

www.rethink.org/get-involved/awareness-days-and-events/carers-week/

bump!

Instead of a pat on the back, please consider signing this petition:

contact.org.uk/news-and-blogs/sign-our-petition-on-a-carers-covid-payment/

Carers in Scotland will be receiving a payment in recognition of the extra work and support they have provided during the lockdown. No such recognition has been offered to unpaid carers elsewhere in the UK.

Please also write to your MP and ask him/her to raise a question in Parliament and/or the Treasury about how low Carers Allowance is in relation to the actual work and sacrifice involved:

www.theyworkforyou.com/

To qualify for Carers Allowance you must be providing a minimum of 35hrs per week of care to someone in receipt of middle/higher rate DLA or the daily living component of PIP, you yourself must not earn more than £128 p/wk from other sources (approx 15hrs p/wk at minimum wage). This means that many people providing qualifying care to a friend or family member are not entitled to Carers Allowance, it also means that those who are entitled to it are living on an amount far below minimum wage.

Carers' Allowance is a whopping £67.25 a week.

Over 35hrs this equates to £1.91 per hour.

The reality for many unpaid carers is that they are providing 24/7 care in which case the Carers Allowance equates to just 39p an hour.

In addition, it is a taxable benefit so is taken into account as income when calculating other entitlements.

Unpaid carers save the government approximately £132 billion per year in care costs - enough to pay for a second NHS. If we all walked away tomorrow, the social care system would collapse.

Caring takes a toll on mental and physical health. Carers are statistically more likely to be in poor overall health compared to people who are not carers. They are more likely to put off seeking medical support for themselves due to prioritising the health of the person they care for, more likely to have health problems directly related to caring, more likely to be injured as a result of their caring duties, more likely to suffer from mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, and more likely to experience mental breakdown or burn out.

Carers Allowance should reflect this.

Well said Bank
It’s a huge disgrace
I also think it’s time they scrapped the 35 hours
Some people need intensive care for maybe a few hours a day to keep them on an even keel but maybe not 35 hours
Maybe mornings, give breakfast, medication help with dressing, showers etc , this would free them up to be able to work at another job and get a reasonable living wage.
My cousin does this for her mum with dementia before she goes to day care and she should be recognised for the hard work she does
There are so many others too
Also the benefit should be interchangeable either the carer receives it or the disabled person can claim it to pay someone / or more than one person

Some years ago I was taken to hospital, near death, due to the unbelievably heavy physical caring load I was forced to undertake for many many years, twenty four hours a day. I was groomed into it as a teenager by the social workers and made to believe I would be prosecuted if I refused. I lived a half life in this country. I had no access to medical care, education, employment. I could barely leave the house (lockdown has been a snap for me in comparison!).

All of this is, whatever, it happened, but one thing I will never forget: when I got out of hospital, the DWP pursued me and made me repay the carer's allowance for the week I was in ICU. That week I was dying, I did not do my 35 hours so was not entitled to the £62. The previous 15 years of 168h per week counted for nothing. There are no holidays and no sick pay on carers allowance.

I kept the letter and I look at it sometimes. It's a good reminder of how the world really is. That is what this country thinks of carers in reality.

Petition signed.

Sadly all true and not well enough understood by the public.

Can I also add my personal fury that for those in receipt of Carer's Allowance there is a very strict limit on how much they can earn otherwise - ridiculously capped at about £128 per week. This means for those who do manage to squeeze in some paid work around their care commitments, they are doing so with hands tied. The rates of poverty among families dealing with disability are much higher and on the increase.

www.jrf.org.uk/data/poverty-rates-families-disabled-person

The DWP christmas bonus is £10, the same as it was in 1972!

The government consider Carers "employed" for the sake of statistics thus reducing unemployment figure. As pp stated min wage/holiday pay/sick leave do not apply to this group of government employees.

Carer's Allowance £67.25 per week

Job Seeker's Allowance £74.35 per week

Who worked those numbers out and decided carers need £7.10 less a week to eat than job seekers?

Following

The rates of poverty among families dealing with disability are much higher and on the increase.

And yes to this.

@MNHQ can you please consider taking all of this up as a campaign? It is an issue that disproportionately affects women and mothers as we are more likely to have to shoulder caring responsibilities - over 58% of recognised unpaid carers are women, there will be many more who are caring but go unrecognised.

There are many people out there who don't realise the reality of caring, the physical and mental toll it takes. They think it involves wiping shitty arses and spoonfeeding soup and then there are some who think it's all a massive scam, there is a particularly nasty school of thought that thinks you shouldn't be paid for looking after a family member because you should just do it anyway. The reality is having to be available 24/7, permanent on call status. Not being able to think too closely about the future because that's a scary place full of the worry of what will happen to your person (in my case, my disabled children) when you're no longer around and they are thrown either onto the mercy of the wider family or the social care system. It's trying to stay positive when you feel like screaming. It's putting yourself last always, I've been delaying surgery for last year because of caring responsibilities. Its having ti get up and keep going because there is no other option. Its navigating the gatekeepers of services and dealing with appointments, assessments, letters, forms. Its knowing that even when retirement age comes and you are past the age of being able to work as a paid carer, you will not retire and you will continue to be an unpaid carer until either your body, your mind, or your life gives out. It's the constant pressing weight of responsibility. But they don't see us. We're invisible.

We get the occasional "you're a hero!" or the ever patronising "I don't know how you do it!". The rest if the time we go back to being invisible unless the existence of our person somehow impacts upon other people and then suddenly we're very visible and usually in the wrong (see the umpteen thousand threads about a disabled person who has done something unexpected and the many, many posts stating that their carer should have somehow predicted it was going ti happen and prevented it).

It limits our opportunities, limits our career choices, limits our access to activities and services that others take for granted, and damages our health. We deserve a fit for purpose system for carers that includes proper financial recompense and access to relevant physical and mental health services.

carers.org/grants-and-discounts/introduction

And let's not forget the Pile-o-Bullshit™️ about only being able to claim one allotment of Carers' Allowance no matter how many people you are caring for. Over one million unpaid carers are providing care to more than one person. If they qualify for Carers' Allowance they are still only paid £67.15 per week.

As official carer for two people I concur.

Scotland is changing this soon I think?

My job is very physical.

Physically caring for a person becomes a two person job quite easily according to health and safety guidelines. This is dictated by the size of the person being cared for and the level of physical care needed.

I have been doing a two person job by myself for well over a decade. As mentioned above this is without holidays/sick leave/etc. Obviously the risk to my safety, health and future caring ability are impacted by this.

There have been times I have not been able to do my job properly leaving all of us doing without - there is not a fine line between not managing and neglect. If I cannot complete my caring job properly then I am guilty of neglect but how can one person do the physical job of two?

In addition any care assistance granted to me is automatically halved since (for example) 2hrs care must then involve 2 people according to guidelines, so I get 1hr care instead. The job is so complex it requires time spent to learn, the hours offered are so few (then halved) and so complicated to arrange that assistance becomes unworkable because it would create neglect.

I know many people in this situation. I know others who do not require as complex a level of care who have been getting by with assistance and it works well, until now when the pandemic has stopped a great deal of care in homes due to safety concern. Some of these people are having to return their direct payment money leaving them in limbo - not knowing what happens next or if they will get help again in the future.

I constantly meet the attitude that "the social" pay for everything needed. I wish it did and this urban myth needs challenged or there will never be impetus for change.