At long last, Carers Week is here. From the 12th of June till the 18th of June, there is a week long awareness about carers and what they go through. As far as I know, 8 important charities are engaging to get communities across the UK involved, encouraging people to register events and pledge support in the run-up to Carers Week 2017.

If you want to see the video version of this blog post, see below.

Carers usually struggle in getting recognition and also struggle to get representation or know their rights. Carers rely heavily on communities to help them out, which is why carers week tends to focus on building carer friendly communities. A caring community tends to be aware to the carers plight.

So if you do not know already, what is a carer? A carer is an unpaid person caring for someone close to them. They are not care workers as some people might believe, most of the time a carer is caring for their sick relative, friend or neighbour. The person receiving the care from the carer usually is suffering from long term chronic illness, be this physical or mental.

Those within the caring community make sure carers get the information they need in order to carry out their carrying duty. People within that community never blame the carer if things go wrong and they make sure that the carer should spend sometime for themselves. Doctor surgeries in such communities have a carer register and try very hard to work with the carer and cared for person at the same time.

The caring role is without a doubt one of the most misunderstood and complex role around because no one can be fully prepared to care for someone at a drop of the hat, one could go so far to say that the current society we live in is geared to individualism, where respect is focused on those getting a job and making money for the economy, but the problem with that idea is it ignores the family role, the problem of an individualistic society is ignores communities, communities are what makes a good society and to have people generally caring for each other can build a stronger community.

Being there for the family is a noble, civilized and honorable thing to do, we eventually will either care for someone or be cared for ourselves, there is no other way around it. The challenges to the caring model has now been ever greater due to austerity measures, pressure is brought to bear on the family, lack of resources in the NHS leaves more carers fighting hard to limit the ‘cared for’ needing hospital treatment. With the 6.5 to 7 million carers, too much pressure on carers can lead to complete collapse of the NHS, but unfortunately carers do not carry financial capital, if a carer was to pay for services, then more respect would be placed upon them.

Carers work in isolation, they do not want to see continued harm placed upon those they care for. They work hard to avoid that situation when the cared for has to end up with extra support. It is time to recognize carers and support the carer friendly communities that help carers and their families. A caring society should be celebrated, no one would want to risk the idea that people should not care for each other.

Please make a pledge to the Carers week site below.

http://www.carersweek.org/get-involved/pledge-support

It is time to celebrate the world of caring and honor the spirit of a caring community, let us build a carer friendly community and the community will look after us.