Author Archives: Amanda Clark

It’s been a pivotal month for us carers in which our dedication to our loved ones has made the headlines for various reasons,  good and bad.

The good news was that Liberal Democrat MP Wendy Chamberlain’s Carer’s Leave Act finally became law on 6th April.

This provides all carers in employment with a new statutory right to take five days of unpaid leave from work each year to fulfil their caring responsibilities. Wendy, herself, said she would have wanted this to be paid leave but the principle is now enshrined in law and at least doors have been opened. 

 It must come as some relief to many families that are balancing having to work and care in this cost-of-living crisis. 

Both my husband and I worked full time to pay the bills whilst we were bringing up our two kids in the South East. We are proud of them both: one neurotypical, artistic daughter and our son who has Autism and a Learning Disability. 

Archie, now 21, needs constant care and supervision. Even when he reached an age that most teenagers could self-administer paracetamol and have a duvet day, we would have to take it in turns to negotiate time off with our bosses to look after him.  My husband used up countless days of Annual Leave when he was sick or I had an INSET day. We also needed to pay for a childminder after school as his special needs transport would deliver him home by 4pm and neither of us could leave work by then. 

As if that wasn’t hard enough, at the age of 16 he developed Epilepsy.

The months after this crushing diagnosis were made of nightmares while the neurologist tried to balance his meds. Right in the middle of teaching a French lesson, I would get a call from his school saying he had fitted, injured himself and they had called the paramedics. Trying not to panic, I would rapidly set work for the class, inform a colleague I needed to leave immediately and try to stick to the speed limit as I drove the twenty miles down the motorway to my injured son. The worst was time when he gave himself a black eye as he collapsed, convulsing on to a urinal – poor thing!

My Head Teacher was always supportive in the various emergency scenarios that arose but there was always the expectation that I would make up the time at some point with extra cover or more duties. It also came with the guilt that my colleagues had to compensate for my absences. 

I was, though, lucky and can imagine that other employers and employees may be less sympathetic. I really hope that the Carer’s Leave Act will remove the onus on us to make up for lost work time and lead to more empathy with colleagues. Quite frankly, we carers have enough on our plates. 

This new law is hopefully a stepping stone to so much more that can be done for the 2.4 million unpaid carers in the UK who save the economy an estimated £164 billion. 

Carer’s Allowance- changing to Carer’s Support Payment in Scotland, is now a meagre £81.90 per week or £4,258.80 per annum. For those of us lucky enough to live north of the border we can add in the supplements we get in June and December and we get a grand total of £4,836. That’s an hourly rate of 49p in England and Wales and 55p in Scotland -if you consider most of us are on duty day and night.