A Co Down mum has spoken of her frustration at the lack of support available for unpaid carers in Northern Ireland.
It's been a decade since Barbara Morrow from Ballyhalbert left her 18 year career in the civil service to care full time for her two children, nine-year-old Zachary and Scarlett, aged 7.
Both children have autism while Zachary also has a lifelong bowel disease which requires constant care.
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Barbara, 44, is coming into her tenth year of caring as Zachary was ill from birth, with multiple food protein allergies and severe reflux disease. He was further diagnosed with autism while his sister Scarlett is also autistic and has anxiety needs.
She explained: “Life as an unpaid carer is often a lonely one and made unnecessarily difficult by the many sectors that are meant to support us.
“My now ten-year experience as a carer has been unduly complicated by a distinct lack of medical care, financial support or indeed any form of government or public recognition for the position that I have found myself in.
“Every single aspect of my children’s care has been a fight and it’s an exhausting way to live. At times I survive rather than thrive, and it’s simply inhumane to expect carers like me to keep on going.”
Barbara added: “There isn’t even the basic understanding needed to ensure that both my needs and the needs of my children are met.
”Almost every sector that I have engaged with, from medical staff, social work, social care, benefits, employers, educational provision and beyond, have demonstrated repeatedly that they either don’t have the resources or the willingness to help.
”I feel I am roundly taken advantage of because I care for my loved ones. The public needs to be made aware of the failings in all of these systems, before unpaid carers collapse under the strain.”
Barbara was speaking out to mark Carers Week as a scathing new report, published by a group of charities, finds that people providing unpaid care for sick or disabled family members in Northern Ireland are being ‘forced to beg for help’ from the health service and aren’t being offered the support they need until they’re in a crisis.
The report, which is based on the testimony of over 240 unpaid carers from across Northern Ireland, argues that many of those looking after sick loved ones are reaching breaking point due to a postcode lottery of support, with services either failing to meet their needs or missing entirely.
It calls for Stormont departments, health trusts and other public services to deliver a ‘New Deal’ to give unpaid carers greater support and opportunities for breaks from caring.
Back in April, MLAs from Stormont's largest parties issued a joint call for a new carers strategy for Northern Ireland.
In a letter to the top civil servant in the Department of Health, representatives of Sinn Féin, the DUP, Alliance Party, UUP and SDLP said that despite saving Northern Ireland’s health service billions of pounds in care costs each year, many of the 220,000 people looking after sick or disabled family members here are living lives “defined by ill-health, extreme pressure, hardship and lost opportunities.”
The letter called for a cross-departmental strategy to address the challenges unpaid carers face in the spheres of health and social care, welfare, housing and employment.
Carers Week runs from 5-11 June 2023 across the UK and aims to raise awareness of the challenges facing unpaid carers and highlight the contribution they make to society. Carers NI estimates that unpaid carers save Northern Ireland’s health service over £4.5bn in care costs per year.
Craig Harrison, Chair of the Coalition of Carers Organisations Northern Ireland and the author of the report, said: “We’ve spoken to hundreds of unpaid carers from a wide range of ages and circumstances, and the all-too-common experience is of being badly let down by Stormont and public services.
“They’re expected to quietly prop up the health and social care system with little-to-no support – forced to beg for help and plead for even basic things like the chance of a break or access to a care package to make their life easier.
“It should never be the case that an unpaid carer has to reach a major crisis point before they’re offered a bit of respite, but that is the reality facing some of our carers today.”
Mr Harrison added: “We’re talking about a population of people who save the public purse billions-of-pounds per year. They give so much, and shouldn’t be asked to sacrifice their own wellbeing, live in poverty and forgo any sort of quality of life in return.
“Our unpaid carers need a New Deal from Stormont to get to grips with the challenges they face and deliver the support they desperately need, not just in the realm of health and social care, but in welfare, housing, employment and beyond.”
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