Welcome to a carer awareness blog from carer activist, author and poet Matthew McKenzie. The writing of this blog is on the 23rd of November, which means it is Carers Rights day 2023. This day is so important to carers because it is a chance for them to understand their rights if caring for someone unpaid.

Carer rights are important for many reasons, but if you are a carer providing care for someone going through mental or physical health needs. Why is it important to learn about your carer rights?

• Learning about your rights make the journey easier

The theme of Carers rights day 2023 is Your rights: today, tomorrow and in the future

The title says it all. The point of learning about your rights is to learn what can make your journey easier as a carer. Lets be honest, caring is a valuble thing, a noble duty that one can pick up and be there for others. The sad thing is this journey will be a path where there are hills and mountains to climb.

This journey will have the carer coming to splits in the road, where if they take the wrong path or wrong decision it will affect them for the rest of their lives. So learning the signs, notices and signals on this journey can make the travel much easier.

These signs could be

Being identified as a carer
Being valued for what you do
Being listened to and having your concerns recorded
Being offered information and advice about your caring role
Access to a carers assessment
Access to an advocate or access to a support group.

Here is a carer rights day awareness video that I have made. You can view below.

One of the best things a carer can experience is to be identified. When I mean identified, it would be identified from health and social care services. It means that if you get into trouble, then extra support kicks in earlier. Still, as a carer do not expect this to happen all the time. Carers have to know their rights and step forward to say to services “I am a carer”.

It is a shame that carers have to do this. It is a shame that sometimes services need to be reminded of their duty identify carers. So this is one of the many reasons to have a carers rights day.

• Learning about your rights improves services

Everyone learns from each others journeys. It is the way of the world. If a carer has the most difficult path to travel then those who provide services will want to make improvements. Most people do not want carers to face challenges that are so difficult that it would put them off providing unpaid care. The way things stand now is that health and social care services will become more reliant on those caring in the community. The population is getting older and we are all living longer. So society now needs to understand the importance of providing unpaid care, because we now cannot expect services to always be there.

This means carers need to know their rights so they can feedback to services on what works for them. If carers sit there and cope then service providers will second guess what they think will work. This is unacceptable and this means little in co-production and design of health services.

• Learning about your rights gives you power

Knowledge is a powerful thing. Information is not enough and we must put information into practice. This information can be powerful if applied at the correct time. It is no good being told your rights and not learning from about those rights.

Knowing where you stand can give you confidence in dealing with services. You know what to expect and if you do not get that quality service then you can remind services of your rights.

• Final word

I do not expect Carers Rights day to magically solve the situations carers experience from their journeys. Health and social care services can forget to support carers. Such services might focus all their efforts on the patient and forget the carer. We can also note that people might not even notice they are providing care and will all to often ignore their rights.

This is why Carers Rights day occurs every year. It is an important day to remind ourselves that we all need to be aware of our rights because it make the journey easier for us all.

Happy Carers Rights day 2023