A week’s break would have made a huge difference to me when my mum had cancer – and so would recognition of carers’ vital role
For the first time, employees in Great Britain are going to have the right to time off work for caring responsibilities. This change, which comes into effect tomorrow, will affect about 2.5 million people who are juggling employment with caring for long-term sick, disabled or elderly loved ones. I know first-hand why carer’s leave is sorely needed. For about four years, I balanced paid employment with caring for my mother, finally resigning from work altogether when her cancer became terminal. I was fortunate to have kind employers who allowed time off, but the right to care for our loved ones shouldn’t rest on goodwill. It should be enshrined.
Plenty has been written about the difficulties that working parents face, but working carers are almost entirely overlooked. We experience so many of the same challenges: the stress of being pulled in two directions, the anticipation of accidents or emergencies, and the guilt of never doing our job nor our care to the best of our abilities. But in some ways it’s worse, because the person we love is suffering, not learning and growing. And some people are struggling under the double burden of childcare and eldercare. It’s exhausting and hard. It’s also incredibly lonely. While parents have photos of offspring on their desk, carers are left out of the camaraderie. For us, there is no workplace chatter about the people in our care; no photos, no news about sports days or exams. We’re invisible.
Emily Kenway is a social policy doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh, and author of Who Cares: the Hidden Crisis of Caregiving and How We Solve It (Wildfire, 2023)
