Once again, I give due credit to BBC Radio Five Live for highlighting a very important story that is barely reported in other parts of the media. The story today has been about carers. Not grown up carers, mind you, although they are some of the greatest, least recognised citizens of our country, but child carers, some as young as five years of age. In particular, the emphasis has been on an astonishing organisation, the Honeypot Chidren’s Charity.
To my eternal shame, I have never really given the subject of caring a great deal of thought. I suppose it’s because I’m all right. It’s not happening to me, someone else can sort it out. After hearing today’s stories, it might not be happening to me – although perhaps one day I will have a carer looking after me – but I’m not going to close my eyes to it.
There are 250,000 child carers in our country. I had no idea the issue was so big. 250,000 children who, once they have finished a school day, spend much of their time looking after a member of their family at home. I will not go through everything these children do – you can read that on the Honeypot website – but it amazed me. Children as young as five providing full time care to an adult. They do it because they love their parents, they do it because no one else would do it otherwise. In many cases, these children lose large chunks of their childhood. Honeypot provides outreach support and respite care to the children. Without it, they would never anything remotely like a “normal” life.
This is a vital public service provided through charity. And, as we have noted before, charity only exists in order to pay for the things the public deems not important enough to pay for through general taxation. Are these children not worthy of our support?
It’s okay to fork out £300 a day for peers to turn up at the House of Lords, but if you are a child carer, you are somewhere down the UK’s priority pecking order. I think it’s shaming to our country. I don’t remember five years of age, but I’ll bet I wasn’t equipped to pour a glass of water, never mind provide caring duties to an infirm relative. I wouldn’t have had a clue, I probably wouldn’t now, either.
Whilst I do not think the state is the answer to everything in our country, I cannot accept that is has no role in the world of caring. If you believe, as I do, that the state is another way of referring to us as a community and if we do not support young carers, what sort of country do we live in? As Sarah Brett said on Five Live, if something happened to your mum and dad, you’d just do it, become a carer. That’s true, but if there is such a thing as society, then they should never be alone.
