Editorial: Selfless carers deserve support

OPINION: They are the unheralded heroes of our community.

They are the vast group of people who look after their loved ones and sometimes not so loved ones with little complaint and often little support. Certainly financial recompense is slight.

The carers in our society range from the grandparents who look after grandchildren to family or friends who look after those who have suffered an accident, are ill or are just getting old.

Caring for a loved one is often thrust at a person with little warning. It can result from an accident, a health scare, a diagnosis or a change in circumstances.

On other occasions, carers are there from the beginning and as the conditions worsens, so their involvement intensifies.

Little attention is paid to carers by the community at large, though we all have reason to be grateful. Millions of dollars in time and resources are carved off our annual health and social services bill because people look after their own.

Slowly though, the need to recognise carers and support them is growing.

In Blenheim this week the group Support Families in Mental Wellbeing was to the fore. The organisation is there to "care for the carers" of people with mental illness. It provides a drop in centre which offers support, information and understanding. There are also two field workers, who supply all of the above plus advocacy.

And as manager and field worker Cheryl Thompson said in an article, "we also add a dash of humour."

It is suspected that last ingredient is one of the most important. Caring can be a long involvement, and can often harm or even destroy the relationship between the carer and sufferer.

The problems facing grandparents raising grandchildren has also been documented.

Former Massey University social work lecturer and researcher Jill Worrall last year looked at 200 families where grandparents were bringing up children. She found almost half of the families surveyed were earning less than $29,000 a year and were struggling to pay their food and electricity bills.

Some grandparents went hungry to feed their grandchildren, stopped going to the doctor to save money and could be physically abused by their young charges. For many grandparents, of course, it is a joy to step in and raise the children their children can't. But almost always it is a financial, if not social, burden.

Groups such as Support Families in Mental Wellbeing Marlborough are essential to ensuring the people who do the looking after are looked after themselves. There are several groups in New Zealand which provide support nationwide, including the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust and Carers New Zealand.

What is needed is a wider acknowledgement of the work carers do and the help they provide the country as a whole.

- The Marlborough Express

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