'Life as a Young Carer'

Picture this: it’s a Monday night. You have been working till five, and you have a Cold War test and half an English essay to prep for tomorrow. Evening seems straightforward, right? More work!

But then you get home to the news that you need to head right back out again because that really fun part of your life that classifies you as a young carer has popped its head up – some kind soul has stolen your dad’s phone while he was waiting in A&E and he, being severely physically disabled, was unable to stop it and as a result needs your help recovering it. It can’t wait, because he needs the voice control for, well, everything, and now you’re stuck with the dilemma of: do you not go and help him, potentially leaving him without this essential tech for a week, or do you go and sacrifice hours of revision to help him out?

While this scenario may be unique to me, the situation as a whole isn’t. According to the Department for Education, an astounding 53,976 students are recognised as young carers, meaning they help to care for a sibling or parent with a physical disability, mental health issues, or addiction problems. The intensity of the role can vary – maybe you have to help feed your sibling, maybe you’re responsible for your parent’s medications and hospital appointments. The fact is, these are extra responsibilities that the average child or teenager will not have to live with. The difficulties a young carer may face can include isolation due to not having time to spend with friends or family, and damage to education due to having less time because your life revolves, at least to a certain extent, around the person they care for.

It's all well and good knowing about young carers and what they face, but you might still be thinking: okay, but I do the chores. I look after my dog. What’s the big issue? I don’t mean to be insulting, but these are things I’ve heard nice, friendly people say out loud, so I’ll use an analogy I would have used for them.

Getting a pet as a child is considered a big responsibility. Parents or guardians can sit and talk to each other for ages debating whether their child is responsible – there’s the key word here – to care for a living, breathing, sentient thing. Often children are warned about how big of a responsibility it is. Heck, I remember my own mum telling me about how I would have to look after my first pet!

She did not, however, have this conversation with me about my dad. If you couldn’t tell from the anecdote earlier, my dad is severely disabled, being able to blink, speak and swallow on a good day. Although he now receives round the clock care, I have been and still am responsible for giving him food and drink, getting him things and helping him when he goes into hospital. It’s been this way since I was a child, and it isn’t going to change, and while it might not sound much, it isn’t exactly easier to deal with.

I’m not trying to garner pity by writing this, but I did want to try and raise awareness about a cause that, for obvious reasons, matters a lot to me. And with the annual Young Carers Action Day being just the other week, it felt like the ‘write’ time (pardon the pun) to write something about it.

Thank you for your time, but if you’ll excuse me, the ‘dad-min’ must continue – the wine gums in his room aren’t going to eat themselves – or steal themselves, either.