Into the Abyss … (or Where is Care? )

I am becoming really ill.

And then what happens to MsFitty?

Always very active  I’m suddenly finding it very hard to get about. I limp from a – b. I feel as if all the blood has been sucked out of my body. I keep falling  into some kind of coma.

I’ve got two quite nasty things wrong with me – I’m in a lot of pain and on a lot of different drugs . These are  horrible in actuality and potentiality.  I have to have blood tests every 2 or 3 weeks. It is hard to know whether I’m suffering from illness, or side-effects, or conflicts between the meds. Or all three.

I’m very angry with myself for being a weakling, and I keep on pushing myself,  but the lists of tasks are endless, the responsibilities are mounting higher and higher and every day the world starts spinning and  I suddenly have to lie down. And every time I lie down I pass out…

In the middle of this we have had no contact from MsF’s social worker at all – no apology, no rearranged appointment, no word or email or letter or anything. We have had no contact from her boss – even though I asked her to contact me yesterday as a matter of huge urgency. And MsF has no Youth Support Worker to follow up her missing education. No-one is following up the fact that the education services just turned their back on her.

Ms FItty is fallen into the Slough of Despond.

So who is supposed to be ensuring there is a Youth Support Worker on her case? Well, bless me, it’s Ms Fitty’s absent, disengaged, unresponsive social worker. The one who hasn’t managed to raise the invoice which would allow Continuing Healthcare to fund their promised support for MsFitty for a full year now and thereby improve her life and mine.

We have fallen into a big black hole,

Yet Ms Fitty needs to be supported to finish her education, to improve her health, to live an independent life – and if anything happens to me, that need is more urgent than ever!

If I am not able to support Ms Fitty it will cost the Local authority a lot of money to replace me.  It will cost them a minimum of £131,400 a year, for someone to be by her side, day and night round the clock. Assuming there is no need for overtime, or holiday pay  or sick pay or European Working Time Directive anything else that MsF’s social worker  thinks necessary for her own existence, though not for mine.

If MsF and I had had reasonable support at all from our local authority, I might not be in the situation I now am.

I started the Carer’s Virtual Strike to make everyday people  understand  the stress and strain that we carers are under. Six months later, I feel as if I have been a voice shouting in the wilderness

Join the Carers Virtual Strike caretostrike.co.uk. Realise that people like me cost a fortune to replace when you wear me out so recklessly and wantonly