I have written this as the way I see the situation of care.
I would welcome any comments or personal experiences that can be shared for others to read and empathize with during our special week, Carers’ week.
This week is carer’s week, however, I don’t see many things changing in the interests of the carer.
Especially for those who care full-time as it is a joke the way we have been treated during lockdown. Where the authorities have mainly used that time to deny carers the support they have needed.
By keeping community services closed for much of the time and the total disregard of whether carers were coping with the added strain of caring for much longer hours.
In many cases, there has been disregard of those who are dependent on community services in order to manage to care for a loved one.
Facilities were made unavailable when it was essential they weren’t just closed down even if it has been temporarily. Obviously, most services have been disrupted to a point of total unavailability.
There has been a ‘don’t care’ attitude towards carers struggling during the lockdown. Very little support and I believe a deliberateness in using the situation to the advantage of the services, who have made excuses not to provide proper or extra support during the pandemic. More especially through the first lockdown.
I feel for those who have experienced, perhaps for the first time, how it feels when help is withdrawn by the services for a long period of time.
Strangely enough, although there has been a pandemic where lockdown was forced. It is not only during a pandemic that many carers have been the subject of foul play by the responsible services.
There doesn’t need to be a pandemic for the services to unreasonably ‘pull the plug’ on someone’s care needs or health care needs for that matter. As this is a regular occurrence many people have suffered and have had to complain about it.
There has been no better time for the authorities to strike than during a pandemic. They also know carers, in many cases, have been worn down by their experiences of being left to fend for themselves so are less able to deal with sudden demands for reassessments/reviews, and that kind of stuff.
In fact, the management of the services are busily ensuring staff are paying visits to most carers and demanding to catch-up on reassessments and reviews of pre-arranged care packages. This is in order to reduce care in as many cases as possible, as opposed to increasing it or leaving it as it is.
They do like to pounce when they feel morale is at its lowest and of course while they still have the weapon they were given by the government of the Coronavirus Act. Which local authorities certainly have been using.
Look at it this way, most of those working in learning disabilities teams have had plenty of time to rest while the pandemic has been raging and the population locked down.
Many were not on the front line of working with covid patients and were purely working, when they did, at a more relaxed pace in the safety of their homes. They could take their time responding to clients or their carers and did use the pandemic as an excuse for delays of services, in many cases.
In fact, some were so inspired by a newfound ability to further ignore carers that they went to the extent of the extreme. That is in comparison to the original way it was before covid even evolved and it was bad enough then.
Now carers have drainingly slow responses to contend with, that is, even if response was forthcoming at all. It very much appeared that there were only half-hearted responses to address any type of issue the unpaid carer population had.
Although I am speaking for myself here I am also confident many agree with what I’ve said as the media even picked up on the situation during the pandemic.
Also, I recall local authorities issuing statements to excuse themselves whilst promising to learn from the mistakes of the first lockdown in particular for carers who were left almost totally fending for themselves. In many cases, completely fending for themselves.
I am sure many carers have felt dejected and ignored during this time, but it has not only been during in this unprecedented time. It has been more.
For me, as a carer, I have been put through a continuous lockdown situation, even before it was ever used as a word to describe a nation under what really has been a house arrest due to a pandemic.
In fact, I have personally suffered decades of this particular newfound situation that most people have faced in the last 15 months.
It has been in place far longer for me and many other carers. Especially those who care for someone who has always needed lifelong care and particularly with reference to complex disabilities.
My son was caused those disabilities from the very beginning of his life so it’s a bit ironic that the services have for much of his life blockaded support getting to him.
Education, health, and the local authority have been instrumental in disallowing proper support for his complex needs and have gone to the extremes of only allowing most of the support to be made available to others, often with a less disabled person to care for.
Examples are permanent exclusions from the support that has included legal education and community services, withdrawing support, and withholding information in order to prevent me from gaining support with my son’s health and care needs for most of his life. Also the ignoring pleas of support during a time where support had been unreasonably reduced to far less than could be managed.
There has also been a continuation of ignoring my needs as a carer. For example, the local authority, ignoring the need to draw up a carers support plan for many years and their refusal to acknowledge any eligible needs towards me as a carer. Also, my son’s needs as a person on 117 aftercare, haven’t been and aren’t met properly by the services who are pretending they don’t know it’s a long-standing issue that they have been persistently ignoring.
It’s carers week, but nothing ever changes for carers by the attitudes of the government in only supplying the lowest benefit available universally for carers.
End carers’ financial hardship.
THIS PULL QUOTE IS FROM CARERS UK SITE. I WOULD LIKE TO ADD ALL CARERS WHO CONDUCT LIFELONG CARE SHOULD BE PAID A LIVING WAGE.
Despite their enormous contribution, too many carers
continue to struggle financially – for many carers it
presents a barrier to accessing breaks due to the cost
of replacement care and the ability to afford activities.
Improved financial support would particularly benefit
women, who are more likely to be caring and providing
higher levels of care.
The UK Government should immediately increase the
basic level of support for carers through a £20 a week
Supplement to those entitled to Carer’s Allowance.
These payments should be backdated to March 2020.
Health and social care staff continue to treat carers like they are entitled to own their time and also demand it.
How can anything change when society turns a blind eye to the situation? That is the truth and it’s more than disappointing.
It causes the situation of caring for someone long-term without proper support by the deliberate creation of life restrictions for that person, which end up as being grossly abusive to the victim, who more often than not is the carer.