Next government called on to provide funding to address health issues of family carers
Healthy Ireland survey showed one in seven adults were now carers.
The next government must address the fact family carers are often neglecting their own health or are left struggling due to the gaps in State supports, an expert in caring has urged.
Care Alliance Ireland chief executive Liam O’Sullivan’s comments come after the Healthy Ireland survey showed one in seven adults were now carers.
“Carers rarely complain about their own health and when they do things must be pretty bad,” he said.
About 9,000 carers take part in the alliance’s online family carer support project. They can get advice from other carers or healthcare workers, among other supports.
They talk about problems, including “the services have let them down — they’re not reliable or the person they’re caring for may have difficult or aggressive behaviour".
"They seem to be the things that trigger people saying ‘I really need help’," Mr O'Sullivan said.
“Sometimes they get support from a really helpful GP or public health nurse. At the extreme end they come to the realisation they can no longer care for that person.”
He said while evidence shows carers are resilient, it also shows sometimes “it isn’t until after the caring ends that they almost psychologically and physically fall apart, not to be too sensational about it".
“Maybe they under-report their own health or they don’t get checked.”
It is expected the next government could retain junior ministers for disability and older people. Calls have been made for full ministers.
“I’d like to know their officials will read the report, will dig into the data and that should inform future strategies,” he said.
“What we’ve found is sometimes various strategies don’t complement each other.”
Carers can include very elderly parents looking after adult children with disabilities, or friends caring for people in the LGBTQ community estranged from their families, as well as adults for parents or spouses for each other.
“There’s such a variety of caring situations, so I think sometimes at a policy level systems are set up and they become siloed,” he said.
This can mean people get slotted into disability services but when they get older they and their carers need different types of help. However, this may only be available through older peoples services.
“It’s common sense but sometimes there isn’t a whole lot of common sense out there,” Mr O’ Sullivan said.
“You want the policy people and the minister’s advisers to have read this report and thought about the implications. It’s to reinforce the idea of challenging existing silos of services, commit to giving funding year on year.”
The alliance has about 100 members including the Cope Foundation and Alzheimer Society of Ireland. Multi-year funding for these services to support family carers is vital too, Mr O'Sullivan said.
“To be fair to the government, they have tried to address that but that needs to be fully addressed.”
He also supports the ‘carer guarantee’ called for by organisations including Family Carers Ireland. This would see carers in every county have the same level of services.
The Healthy Ireland survey revealed negative mental and physical health impacts for carers. It found 17% of parents were also carers, whether for children, adult children or other people.
Some 41% of parent-carers have long-standing illness compared to 30% of other parents.
They talked about “significant sleep disturbances” including difficulty falling asleep and waking up.
Worryingly, the survey showed 15% experienced mental health problems compared to 12% generally. They had lower positive mental health scores and experienced depression or anxiety.
They often struggle with their physical health, finding it difficult to exercise or quit smoking. However, they were less likely to drink alcohol than other parents.
