Can I get some “shut eye”

Night time falls, you’ve been up all day, caring for your disabled relative. They’re poorly and have been admitted to hospital. You have to stay with them to provide care and to help them communicate. You look around the room, “mmmm, where am I going to sleep”.  Most people wouldn’t think of this when their non disabled relative is admitted to hospital. Mostly they’d go home once admitted and see them in visiting hours. Unpaid carers know that

to ensure their relative is cared for appropriately and can communicate, be understood, they have to stay with them.

As the night goes on, ever hopeful you be able to get some shut eye (once your relative is settled), you ask the staff for a bed to sleep on, “is there a bed for me to sleep”, “I’ve been up 16 hours can I get a fold down bed”, “I need to sleep”. From past experience it’s been, “sorry, what do you need”. “Why do you need one” (not sure why it’s puzzling as to why we need to sleep). “We don’t have one”. “It’s been lent to another ward”. “You can have a mattress on the floor”. “I can get you a trolley to sleep on”. Some end up sleeping in chairs, some down the side of a relatives bed (done this a few times), some on a window ledge.

The thing is, unpaid carers are unpaid but they are workers. They’ve come to the hospital already shattered from a full day, a full week, a full month, a full year caring (no annual leave /respite will have happened for many). Many care 24 hours a day, 7 days of the week, every day of the year. They’ve not turned up at the hospital at the beginning of a shift taking over from someone else, they haven’t just come on shift, they are more likely to have had no sleep or limited sleep for days, weeks or even years (a 15/16 hour day is normal). They will be exhausted, physically and mentally. No doubt traumatised from years of medical problems, near death experiences, and previous hospital trips. They’ll be frightened themselves, emotional about their relative but they mostly never get chance to process this, instead they just have to get on with it, even if they need a breather to process what is happening.

Many unpaid carers have to stay with their relative, to be their voice (in the case of many who are non verbal with learning disabilities) but, they equally need sleep. They are caring for complex individuals. They might be single handily caring for that person with no help from other family members, no team of carers that take over at the end of a 6 hour shift, no back up. They need rest as any other worker does to ensure they can provide the care their relative needs (health and safety regulations, or working time regulations are never applied to unpaid carers). Forgotten about, expected to work a never ending shift with no time and/or nowhere to rest.

Please help raise money for fold down beds, so no carer has to worry about whether they’ll have somewhere to rest when they are in hospital caring for their relative. No unpaid carer should have to justify the need for sleep and the need for a bed to do so. It should be that every single unpaid carer providing 24 hours care in hospital has a bed to rest, so that they can be there for their relative when they need them the most.

https://gofund.me/7416ed44

Thanks ❤️