Well yesterday I e-mailed lots of lcoal schools to ask about going in one day a week to help to gain PGCE experience: I have two eyar's post grad experience in autism and I still bet I won;t hear back! They are inundated here, not desperate. University really striggling to place student teachers now. It may be different elsewhere, but certainly theya re not crying out for the help by any means.
I ahve to say though I have disbaled young chidlren and would I let random people coerced into contact with them? Would I hell as like! These are vulnerable groups, they need support from people wanting to do it, not people coerced by the need for an income. It's a vocation for a reason.
And haha ha at nosuch thing. I feel I have the right to laugh, actually being a carer. Mum cares for Grandad with no elp from anyone, a nasty aggressive old man banned from most palces due to his racism and who she enver spoke to for forty years becuase of the way he treated her (think trying to bash a door down to get to her when she was on bedrest for yet another stillbirth, on basis that he sent Mum to Grammar and didn;t want her stuck with a mere brickie 
). She hates it, he never gives her a minutes peace banging on her door and yet she does it. Sister bought a house with an extra room for parents sgould they need care- lookinf after our own in my blood.
Do I feel valued? Nope I feel as if I am falling between the gaps widening between worthy (earning) and unworthy (chociec claiming) and getting more invisible every day. I am glad that acrer's has been separated from universal credit as I think that does send a message, but we would still be subject to a drop in the value of our income long term and in hinesty, how much do epopel think £53 a week (17p an hour for 2 kids 24/7 care) make me feel as if I have an important role despite the cross party rhetoric?
WHen I was young Dad earned a family wage, there was social housing about for anyone who needed it and most Mums didn;t work 9dmittedly I was in the sticks and feminism probably reached us about twenty eyars after everyone else). I do NOT advocate a return to that at all but equally it's ridiculous to expect women to absorb the care provisions all round AND work. And that's what would happen of course, it does usually come back to women.
Do I feel valued for my role? Like hell do I! Apart from the odd angel comment (so very, very wrong) I am either seen as a drain on benefits or a sad anomally to be forgotten about. Don;t agree? look at the number of posts on the MN Sexualisation campaign and compare with the nuber on the carer's one (BOOTH of which I support). I am despertae to get abck earning and buy myself some kind of security becuase I am sick of waking with panic attacks at 3am, yet there is no chidlcare we can use, and SSD have no responsibility to help get any either. I feel as if I am expected to waft about sustained by teh dignity of what I do and not be bothered by such earthly matters as the heating bill- like hell!
One of us will always have to be home based; when other chidlren grow up, ds3 in particular will still need an equivalent of childare but there is ntohing like Tax Credits to help us after he leaves education, and social services are conspicuous only by their absence as so often is the case. Both of us, and always were, ambitious people with a decent education and skills and worh ethic and we both eel we have been consigned a strange cloak of invisibility: too worthy for criticism, too easy to ignore otherwise.I am a non person. And 'they' (any Government, all of them) know they can get away with it becuase we love the people we care for. If I felt this way about life without the boys toc are for I;d have stopped getting out of bed years ago, but I will not let the boys see me struggle. They will learn soon enugh how society sees disbaled people, childhood is the best part of many disabled people's lives, but not et please God.
there was a thread on here a while back wher epeople argues carers did nothing more than every otehr aprent: well all I can say if you have a child who is NT and are bruised from your eleven year old, or worrying about how you will cope with childcare when your child is 37, you have issues my friend. Whereas I ahve reality.