Whats it like being a young carer?

Guest blog - Emily-Jade.

In the world we live in everyone wants something that they don’t have, people with straight hair want to have curly hair, people with curly hair want to have straight, People want more money; to be prettier; more intelligent. We all want something that we don’t have. Even your average 13 year old wants their life to change - the majority of them who want to be popular and more attractive is overwhelming!

What did I want at that age? I wanted the same thing that your average young carer wanted, I wanted the person I was caring for to be healthy again. My Name is Emily-Jade and I’m one of the 700,000 young carers in the UK.  I was five when I started caring for my father. He had Angina and Arthritis; found tasks difficult - walking up the stairs, bending down, picking things up off the floor.

My daily tasks including washing the pots, doing the laundry and other general housework; making him some breakfast. I was the only Five year old I knew who could cook a Sunday dinner. Whenever he struggled with getting out of bed I’d help him up, I’d -give him his medication otherwise he’d forget it and massage his joints to help him stay clear from pain, get his clothes ready and then I’d leave for school and spend 6 hours sat in a lesson worrying about if he’d fallen, if he was struggling to breath, when I’d come home, it wasn’t like ‘right, Now I can go out with my friends’. Coming home from school meant checking on my dad, Cooking the tea and then going to shops to get the weekly shopping in.

As I got older my father became more dependent on me to take care of him, especially when he developed cancer and spent more days in bed recovering, meaning I was basically the adult in the relationship and he was the child. I felt like I had an adult baby. School didn’t understand, When I was on my phone in class they’d shout and take my phone off me and tell me “You can get it back when your parent comes in and collects it” I was just checking up on my dad, seeing if he was okay.

If I didn’t have my homework completed because I was up all night, Checking on my dad who was struggling to breath, or sat beside his bed wondering if the pain he had in his chest was getting worse, or even, sat beside him in the hospital covered in tubes, Wondering if tonight, would be the night I’d lose him.

I think schools need to be more aware about young carers and the high demand put on them and based from personal experience I think these are some of the basic things that could be changed in schools to support those who are caring for someone at home:

•        Have a young carers card, so teachers know when someone needs to take an important phone call, Especially if the person they’re caring for is in hospital or really unwell.
•    Extra time to hand in coursework or homework, Some young carers don’t get time to do their homework until the early hours of the morning.
• Someone assigned to them, To speak to them when they’re having difficulties, Being the adult at home they usually don’t have someone to offload to, There should be a set person in place for the young carer to offload to when things get tough.
•  Free school/college meals. As silly as it may sound, Some young carers skip dinner or tea to make sure the person they’re caring for is fed and well meaning they often miss out themselves, or the fact they can’t afford to pay for the school meal.
•  An academic tutor to help them with the work and give extra lessons, especially since a lot of ‘average pupils’ will reach out to their parent or older sibling when they’re struggling with their homework/coursework, young carers don’t always have this and this is how they end up falling behind.
•  Awareness of what a young carer actually is and what they do, Have someone come into school and give out assemblies/presentations to teach the other pupils and even the teachers about the struggles of a young carer.

I think if I had more help in school when I was a young carer I wouldn’t of acted up as much or got myself into mischief, the school wasn’t listening to me and the only way I could react was by misbehaving. My dad passed away in 2014, so now I’m no longer classed as a young carer, but I have a major passion about helping other young carers, By sharing my story I hope It helps make a change to just one young carers life.

My name is Emily-Jade I’m Nineteen years old and for 14 years, I was a young carer. 

Emily-Jade's Twitter - @EmmyJHeartbeat