Welcome fellow carers. Here is another blog post from Carer Activist Matthew McKenzie. This blog post is on the importance of being heard. If you have been caring for someone unpaid for a long time, you know what I mean by trying to get your voice heard.

I am sure you would have experienced the struggles of the person you are caring for. It might be their physical health or mental health or most likely both. It would have been so difficult to see your cared for’s quality of life suffer. You want to make that difference and you want the person you are caring for to improve. So you take up the role of unpaid carer.

It is not an easy role, you would have been through countless of hospital and doctors appointments. You might have gone through the tricky dialogue of communicating with the health professional to get a better outcome. There will be times that you have to take time off work to provide care. If you are not working then there would be challenges to meet bills and payments. This all adds up to mental and physical exhaustion and you wonder to yourself does anyone pay attention to what you are doing?

You are only trying to be there for your family, just like any other family. You know that the health & social care system is struggling, but if you do your bit then the cared for would not have to rely on the NHS.

Still; you have begun to realise that caring is not enough. You have been through so much for far too long and you want to be heard. You have been through such a long road, something has got to count. There must be others out there who have been through the caring role and would have knowledge to share. It has taken sleepless nights, constant anxiety, backbreaking work and feeling guilty from lashing out because you feel you have not been included.

The good news to all of this is that there are ways to be noticed as a carer. The difficult news is that you must take the steps to be heard. It is so important to be identified as a carer, even caring is not enough, it is so important for carers to be heard and to be taken seriously. I am not saying that there is something that can solve all the challenges that carers face. We need to be practical where we can work towards a better day for many carers.

As carers it is important to join a group that fights hard for carers. It is important to link up with other carers who can exchange ideas and also listen to you. A bigger group helps carry the load that each carer faces. Just by chance, the national charity CarersUK are running a campaign to recruit more carer voices.

This means you could become a member of carers UK for a more powerful way to be heard. Carers UK has many resources to help carers understand their role. It also helps that Carers UK understands that caring can be a difficult role and that they have campaigned for policies to make life easier for carers.

So if you want to counted, included and heard then take that step forward. Click on the following link and be part of something that will not give you a voice. but a way to be included.

Life does not have to be so hard because you care

https://www.carersuk.org/get-involved/join-us/become-a-free-member