Guernsey carers call for more service information

A Guernsey couple who care for both of their mothers at home say more information is needed regarding services available on the island.

Tina and Alan Lowndes have been caring for Tina's mum full time for 10 years, and recently started caring for Alan's mum as well. Tina said, despite the difficulties, the pair would not have it any other way: "I never wanted to put them in a home."

However, she said their caring journey had been made more difficult by a lack of information regarding support services available to them.

Health and Social Care has been approached for a comment.

Tina said they had received "great" support from Admiral Nurses, Guernsey's dedicated dementia nursing unit, but struggled with other support.

"No-one says to you: 'Right, you're now doing caring, so contact this person, contact this organisation.'

"I suppose I could find it out all on myself but I haven't got the time, working, having children, grandchildren, parents... you just don't have enough hours in the day."

Now, 10 years since the start of their caring journey, Tina's advice for others just starting their journey was to do some research.

She said: "If I went back 10 years, I would research it and find out what help we can get."

Pauline Heyworth cares for her husband, who has dementia, at home.

She said support from the Guernsey Alzheimer's Association had been invaluable in helping to fight the isolation of being a carer.

Pauline said she took her husband to sessions organised by the charity and chatted to other carers attending.

She said: "It's only people who are dealing with this illness, who are caring for the people with dementia, that really know how hard it can be.

"If you don't have this outside contact with other people who are in the same situation, you can become very lonely.

"Other people aren't wanting to hear all your woes, of course, whereas, with this group, we all do talk about them and it helps. It gets it off our chest".

Bethan Brouard, service manager at Carers Guernsey, said loneliness and a lack of support was the main concern for most of her clients.

Bethan said, during a support session, one of her clients had said they felt "imprisoned" by their caring role.

"I think it's isolation and fear," she said.

She added she would like to see more collaboration by island services to ensure carers got the support they needed.

She said: "I think we need to again break down the isolation of being carers. We need to put in more support if possible for them and work with other third sector charities.

"Rather than... being blocked off, by that I mean like case allocations or guarding, I think we need to... work smarter, not harder."