Talking point
There are more than 5m unpaid carers in the UK – and with people living longer, that number is only set to rise. Emily Kenway, who cared for her mother, explains why we should all care about our carers
I’ll never forget the day I found out that my mum had lymphoma, an aggressive form of blood cancer. Luminous ink had been injected into her veins to show the cancer cells on a scan. We sat down in the doctor’s office and he spun his computer screen towards us. There was a cross-section of her body in greys and blacks, and dotted across her neck, stomach and groin were yellow splashes. These cruel suns were the cancer, and it was everywhere.
I didn’t become a carer that day. In fact, like most carers, I didn’t become a carer on any specific day. For a long time, I was just a daughter supporting her mum. My mum, Catherine, was single when she got sick and my elder sister was busy with small children, so it made sense that it fell to me. But as the weeks turned into months and then years, and as her needs grew, I realised I’d stepped into a new identity: carer. According to Helen Walker, CEO of Carers UK, my belated realisation was normal. ‘Most carers don’t identify their caring role straight away,’ she tells me, ‘especially because becoming a carer can be a gradual process.’
Aged 31 at the time, I was younger than most people when they become carers, but I was far from alone. In fact, there are more than 5m unpaid carers of long-term sick, disabled or elderly loved ones in the UK today. But care concerns everyone. Because people live longer now than ever before and are having fewer children, we have an increasing number of old people compared with young. In fact, people aged 65 and over are expected to be nearly a quarter of the UK population by 2043. And people aren’t just living longer; we’re also living sicker. Advances in medicine mean problems that might have killed us at a young age no longer do, but we still have their symptoms – which means we need care. So there will be far more carers in the future, meaning if it hasn’t been part of your life yet, it probably will be.
Once I’d recognised that I was a carer, a previously hidden world opened to me. I still remember the night I googled ‘carers’. I was juggling visiting my mum around a demanding job as an anti-human trafficking adviser. Sometimes we’d chat as dusk fell; sometimes she’d be too ill to do anything at all. The security guards at the hospital would wish me good night as I left around midnight. I’d sit on the bus, too tired to cry, watching the car headlamps streak in the London rain. It was a time of immense loneliness. I can’t remember what made me start searching for carer support that night, but I’m so glad I did. I found the Carers UK forum and suddenly I realised I wasn’t alone. I joined their weekly online suppor
