What is a carer?

If you spend unpaid time looking after or supporting a relative, child, partner, neighbour or friend who is frail, ill or who has a physical or learning disability or mental health problems, then you are a carer. Carers are also known as informal carers and family carers.

Most don’t choose to be carers - it’s something that is thrust upon them.

Examples of carers

Sometimes people do not recognise themselves as a carer, especially when they are looking after a spouse/partner, close relative or friend. For example:

Katie looks after her mum, 69,  who has dementia. Her mother does not live with her. Katie works but also visits her mother everyday and along with shopping, washing and cooking makes sure her mum’s clothes are coordinated and helps her to bathe and wash her hair twice a week as her mother cannot manage alone. As well as being a daughter, Katie is a carer.

Dean does all the family shopping and most of the cooking because his mother has her hands full looking after his father. He suffers from an illness that two of his brothers have as well. Dean's sister Leanne helps with washing and washing up. Leanne and Dean are still at school and are children and young carers.

Salwa has a son with cerebral palsy. She doesn’t think of herself as a carer. She looks after her son because that is 'just what you do'.

Michael visits his wife in a residential care home every day. She has dementia and does not recognise him, although he can’t be sure. She doesn’t communicate and the life with his wife is very different from the retired life he had pictured. As well as being a husband, Michael is a carer.

Peggy looks after her husband, 84, who has lymphatic cancer. He is reluctant to accept that his wife, also 84, cannot physically manage the increased burden of washing, helping him to move around and other tasks around the house. Peggy as well as being a wife, is a carer.

Grace has a son with an alcohol-related problem. They do not live in the same house. Grace is angry with her son for not caring for himself and guilty that it might be her fault. She spends time checking that he has food in the house, that the place is clean and that he is still alive. She is often battling with the paid carers as they are sometimes persuaded by her son to take him alcohol. Grace is worn down by the difficult situation.