Layer upon layer

As part of Carers Week, UNITElive is publishing a series of stories featuring Unite members who care for their relatives or work in the care sector.

Today UNITElive speaks to Unite national disabilities committee member Marina Gunn about her experiences as a carer for her husband, Andy.

Unfortunately the realities of caring for a loved one do not just consist of looking after them in their time of need.

Instead, says Marina Gunn, the pressures build layer upon layer, until they creep into nearly every aspect of life – from work commitments and finances to family time.

In 2004 Marina’s husband, Andy, was forced to stop working as his disability became progressively worse.

Andy, who was born with one leg and wears a prosthetic limb, was first discriminated against by his employer because the painful blisters which had developed on his stump caused him to take time off.

A year later Marina became Andy’s carer as his condition deteriorated. Eventually Andy needed an operation and Marina, a bank worker, was forced by her employer to seek a doctor’s note to prove she needed the time off to look after him during his recuperation.

“The doctor gave me a note for two weeks but when I went back into work they nearly had a fit, so I only took a week off. Because I wasn’t there Andy nearly fell down the stairs,” Marina explained.

“When I told work they said ‘we can’t give you any more time off’. I went ballistic and they grudgingly allowed me to come home early – although I didn’t get paid for it.

‘Very stressful’

“Being a carer was very stressful because as well as worrying about and caring for Andy, I still had my responsibilities as a mum and as the sole earner I was worried about paying the mortgage.”

As the situation progressed Marina’s boss tried telling her the bank wasn’t obliged to give her any leeway to care for Andy, which she knew was wrong. It was at that point that Marina joined Unite and within a couple of months she became an equalities rep.

Although the 2010 Equality Act has provided some improvements for carers at work, the situation Marina and her family found themselves in a decade ago is still replicated across the country today.

A Carers UK survey of 6,149 carers across the country carried out in March and April this year found that 47 per cent have struggled financially and two thirds had given up work or reduced their hours.

Half of the respondents said their mental health had gotten worse, whilst 51 percent let a health problem go untreated. Almost a third of carers only get help when it’s an emergency.

Dependent’s leave

Marina sees the difficulties carers face in her role as a Unite equalities rep. She says one issue that needs to be addressed in workplaces is the need for companies to be specific in their policies about dependent’s leave for carers.

Currently many companies state that unpaid dependent’s leave is decided at a manager’s discretion, rather than stipulating a specific time frame. Instead that leave should be a uniform amount of time, with any extra leave on top of that being discretionary, Marina said.

Another issue is that work contracts need to highlight that if an employee does not want to take paid holiday leave during times when they are looking after dependants, they are not obliged to.

“You’ll see people offering to make up the time they take off for dependents and a manager saying “you can lose the pay or make it up on a certain day”, when nine times out of 10 the manager knows they can’t do it because of childcare or other responsibilities,” Marina said.

Empowered

“It’s making people empowered enough to say ‘no hold on a minute, you know I have to pick up my children, you need to offer a solution I can actually comply with’. If the manager continues to be obstructive they need to take out a grievance.”

In the end, Marina says, “knowledge is power” for carers “and as a union we have that knowledge.”

Carers also need to be clued up on issues outside of work. For carers, who face a multitude of pressures, facilities and services to help their loved ones can be a lifeline. Now, Marina says, carers are struggling to even access those lifelines – if they’re there at all.

Marina cites having to lobby her local authority to lower the curb outside of their family home, so Andy could park in their front garden. Initially the council said they didn’t qualify for funding but after Marina did some research she confronted the council with their mistake and they carried out the work.

Another instance occurred when the Gunn’s applied for funding to have their bathroom modified. The council quoted the work at £5,000 but said it could it only provide £3,200 of funding, so Marina applied to the Bankers Association and other charities to help cover the extra costs.

“We were told that before the Tory cuts started to bite all the funding for the bathroom would have been available to us. The government’s turned round and thanked carers for all the unpaid work they do, when they don’t mean a single word,” Marina said.

“They’ve made all these cuts to services and things like the independent living fund, which not only helped disabled people but their carers as well. Now people are forced to seek help from charities and associations, because otherwise they’re stuck.”

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