CARERS RIGHTS DAY

CARERS RIGHTS DAY - 30TH NOVEMBER

This year, Carers Rights Day takes place on Friday 30 November. The day brings organisations together from across the UK, helping carers know their rights and get the help and support they deserve. It does this whilst raising awareness for carers across the UK and the vital contributions that they make.

In the UK, 6000 people become carers daily, and for the majority it is not planned. Many even give up work as juggling work and care responsibilities often becomes too much. Without the amazing work of these carers, many sufferers of serious or long-term illnesses would not be able to live a full life.

This year the key theme of Carers Rights Day is Caring for Your Future. It is vital that carers maintain a strong social life. Caring for a loved one can become all-consuming and lead to isolation and mental health problems without a network of friends and family to talk to.

Liberal Democrats recognise the hard work of carers and want to give something back to them. Carers save our country tens of billions of pounds annually and this day provides a great chance to give something back to them.

County Councillor Caroline Page, Lib Dem Group Leader on Suffolk County Council said:

"Women remain predominantly principal unpaid carers for all age groups (although more men than women are carers in the over 85s) and all carers are disproportionately affected by local government cuts.

This is because it suits the government to keep carers dependent and on the breadline, rather than value their work as the hard work it is. Caring is not a matter of patting hands and making tea. A carer is paramedic, advocate, pharmacist, physio, secretary, diarist, dietician, entertainer, chaperone, and much much more. It is very hard to be eligible for Carers Allowance however many hours you care in the week ( you cannot study, be or look after someone over 65, earn more than £112 a re. week) - yet this, the only available Carers benefit amounts to £64.60 a week - and is taxable. And a woman born in the 50s - a WASPI woman - has a 1 in 2 chance of being an unpaid carer. No pension, yet no chance to earn.

And of course, the moment a carer is bereaved, the state reconfigures the narrative from saint to leech overnight. None of this is fair.

The problems and inequities faced by unpaid carers in Suffolk include poverty, loss of career, pension, loneliness, longterm stress, personal illhealth - alleviated by the often infantile and wholly inadequate nature of the 'support' on offer.

As Lib Dem, Green and Independent Group's spokesperson for Women and Social Care, I suggest these problems would be less hidden and the support better focussed if Suffolk County Council made themselves more aware of the very real challenges facing the county's carers and the county's women!"

Find more info on the link below or call the Carers UK Helpline on 0808 808 7777: