Hello, everyone, welcome back to another carer blog from former mental health care Matthew Mckenzie.

This time I am writing my book about my caring experiences. The book is soon due for release. I say probably about two weeks time or perhaps the end of next month. I certainly will release it really soon. I have titled my book “A caring mind” but I don’t want to talk too much about the book. The book involves a lot of things and I’ll be doing In more blogs about the book, due to my experiences of being a carer over the years.

This particular blog is about telling your story as a carer.

To watch the video about telling your story as a carer, see below.

One of the chapters in my book is about “my story”, which is chapter two. I also explain the reasons why I took on the caring role for my mother, plus also helping my brothers. I also explain what the things I experienced and I explain a bit about my carer story journey and how it changed over time.

A few things I want to point out is that when you tell your story it shines a spotlight or at least highlights specific issues. If you tell your story as a carer, it’s a way of forming connections to those who are listening to your story, this being other carers.

I find it’s a way of release, when you’re telling your story, especially if your carer’s journey was very difficult. When you just want to tell others “This is what I’ve experienced” or “This is what I’ve gone through” then you’re sharing it with other people.  It might not even be a difficult journey, but it is a way of releasing that out there.

There are other main reasons and why it’s important to tell your story as a carer. I think probably the most biggest reason would be that you’re actually educating others. Now, I’ve mentioned before that you would be more likely be telling your story to other carers. In the past when I’ve told my story, and it could be at events or conferences, I found it was a way to educate not only the audience, but within the audience, you could have other carers and pacifically health professionals, those who provided health and support for your loved one or the person you’re caring for. So you’re educating the professionals via health or social care.

Now I’ve looked around as to why it is really important to tell your story as a carer and I’ve come across a report or document released in 2015. It’s came from NHS England website.

And basically the title of this document is “Using stories to improve patient carer, and staff experiences and outcomes” It mentions stories of staff, patient and caring experiences, and journeys through their health system enables NHS to redesign and improve care, according to the patient’s needs are the carer’s needs, where every step of the patient journey is examined and improved.

Reasons to tell your carer’s story

The whole aim of telling your story in some sense would be to improve how the health system works how local authorities provide carer’s support to carers.

When health and social care organisations do events, they want to look into what happened due to a serious incident or a death. They want to improve the approaches or systems regarding complaints or what worked well and what didn’t. They would look at perhaps this is a very good example would be a promotion of service perhaps in a ward or in a GP practice or surgery.

They will display information leaflets on what is happening in a particular service and a good way to promote the service is to have a carer or patient tell their story at that event. But there are many other reasons in using a story to improve the outcomes and redesign or improving health care, health and social care systems.

How you can form your own carer story?

You have to start somewhere. And the aim is to get that story out. Now, what I was told in the past when I was caring for my mom is to perhaps do a journal perhaps everyday if you can, or maybe once a week and how things have been developing because you can look back and look into that journal say, Okay, I tried this, it didn’t work out. It was kind of trying my out caring role and checking what is working.

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When you do a journal, it wasn’t really about to form a story. It was about to keep an eye on if anything goes wrong and you can provide evidence and it can help in writing a doctor’s letter, if there’s a particular issue or symptom that the person you were caring for is suffering, but it can also be used to form your own carers story.

Where can you tell your carer’s story

I want to talk about really where you would want to tell your care story. Now I found the easiest way that I, in the past have told Mark hear his story was probably at NHS carer support groups, because what would happen to your support group is that they would speak to each carer at that group and say you say to them, how things going along for yourself. So I think that’d be an easy way of building up the confidence to tell your story. Another way if you have a fair bit technical knowledge, is there’s no reason why you can’t develop an online video on YouTube.

A good way to tell your story is at events. As in conferences, promotions, especially at mental health trust events. When I was caring for someone using mental health services. My local mental health trust put on carer conferences or carer events, or even mental health events, and they would invite a carer, to tell their story, or even at board meetings, or NHS training courses.

They would invite carers to tell their story and as a way of co-production and getting involved. Another way would be to blog, your story. If you have a website or blog site, there’s no reason why you can’t blog about your carer story. Lastly you could immortalize your story in a book, but be aware that it’s important to have some aspect into confidentiality when you tell your story if the person is still alive or if there’s others involved in that story. Please try and think about confidentiality unless you agree with them that you have to mention them in your book or in your story.

Conclusion

In conclusion, you know, I’ve noticed Carer’s Trust and other major carer’s charity in the UK encourage carers to tell their story. I don’t think even matters even if you’re a carer or former carer, it’s always good to try and tell your story. never tire of telling your story again because it does educate others, and it’s a way of telling others about your identity, your carers identity, and has been a main part of your life.