Tag Archives: cancer

Young carers for dying people

Professor Malcolm Payne, writer, consultant and educator on social work and end-of-life care.

Prof Malcolm Payne

Prof Malcolm Payne

I met Jake when he was 15 years old, living at home with his mother and two early-teen sisters. He knew his mother had lived with cancer for more than five years, during which time his father had gone back to the Caribbean with a new girlfriend. The family were loaded with debt and his mother was doing two jobs to keep their heads above water. Then she came back one day from a hospital appointment with the news that within months she was going to die. Soon, she needed help with washing, dressing, going to the toilet. Who else was there to help but Jake, a boy in his mid-teens? How were they going to eat?  And when his mother died, was he going to be the parent to his sisters?

Very often when we think about young people in the families of people at the end of their life, we think about how they will cope with loss and bereavement. But when parents approach the end of life, young people like Jake, especially in already fractured families, often face taking on practical caring and other family responsibilities. The 2001 UK census found that 114,000 children aged five to 15 acted as informal carers for an adult with a chronic illness. Five thousand of them provided more than 50 hours of care each week. Surveys of young carers suggest that many miss school, are responsible, like Jake, for providing intimate care and do not receive the formal assessment required by law of their own needs as a carer. They report tiredness, stress, anxiety, low self-esteem and social isolation.

46 per cent of cancer carers work full-time, says Macmillan

50,000 UK full-time workers could be giving care equivalent to more than a week’s worth of work to a cancer sufferer each week.
Submitted by Unknown on Tue, 27/11/2012 – 13:15

Some 46 per cent of cancer carers – those looking after another person who has the disease – work full-time, says Macmillan Cancer Support.

And it has been worked out that over 50,000 UK full-time workers could be giving care equivalent to more than a week’s worth of work to a cancer sufferer each week.

“Dealing with the relentless physical and emotional pressures of caring for someone with cancer is hard enough, combining it with a full-time job is extremely difficult and can drive carers to breaking point,” warned Macmillan Cancer Support chief executive, Ciarán Devane.

Cancer patient loses benefits after DWP lists her as dead.

Friday 2 November 2012

KING’S LYNN: Cancer patient loses benefits after DWP lists her as dead.

Eileen Callaby is angry that her benefits were stopped after the DWP thought she was dead.

Published on Friday 2 November 2012 10:57

Weeks after surviving a cancer operation, a patient received a letter stating that her benefits had been cancelled as she had died.

Eileen Callaby says her recovery from lung cancer is being hampered due to the financial worry created by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) stopping her benefits after mistakenly listing her as dead.

Mrs Callaby , 52, who lives with her son Peter in Queen Elizabeth Avenue, Gaywood, even had to visit Lynn Job Centre on Monday with her birth certificate to prove that she is alive.

She is waiting for to start chemotherapy after having sections of her lung removed in September.

Mrs Callaby is calling for improvements in the DWP after section failed to communicate with another that she was alive.

She said: “I don’t understand where it came from that I had died.