'Sometimes all my friends will be out but I won't be able to go'

STACEY Richards is 16. Since she was six years old she has been caring for her mother, doing ever more as her mother's condition has deteriorated. Now she juggles GCSE revision with caring, including feeding her mother through a tube .

Charlie Telling was a taxi driver, working nights in Sunderland. Now, from dealing with closing-time drunks he's been plunged into domesticity as a full time carer for his wife, who is crippled with MS.

Pat Sinclair works nights so that in the day time she can care for her adult son, who was struck down suddenly with a condition that makes him allergic to sunlight.

They are just three of thousands of unpaid carers throughout the country. And who cares for the carers?

Carers do it for free. For love. For duty. (Care workers are the ones who do it as a job, who get paid for it. It's an important difference.) Many carers don't even think of themselves as carers but just get on with it and cope.

And more and more of us will find ourselves in that position. Already three in five people will become a carer at some point in their lives, with half of women likely to become a carer before they retire. There's something to look forward to... The good news is that, slowly, carers are getting a voice. They are getting help. And they are getting legislation to support them in caring while working. It is still very patchy, with appalling gaps, but it's a start.

This week, in Carers' Week, Hywel Francis MP has proposed an Early Day Motion to improve the lives of carers.

"It's very important that we are able to give carers the help they need. Not just for the person they're caring for, but the carers themselves. We all need a life," says Pat Thompson, Carer Support Services Coordinator for the charity Darlington Association on Disability. "The needs are as varied as the carers. Some want practical help. Some want occasional help. Some just need to talk. There is help for them but often the problem is knowing where to find it.

"What we try to be is a signpost service. If people come to us, we can point them in the right direction for the others. Unfortunately, some people don't come to us until they're at crisis point.

"We can work with them and with social services, with housing services, tell them about support groups, benefits - some carers can get £44 a week. We can go to meetings with them, tell them what help is available. We even have a little pot of money which means we can treat exhausted carers to a posh hairdo or a day out. It helps."

Sometimes it's a question of flexibility. A little bit of help can be even more important if it's tailored to the carer's needs - so that they can keep a part time job, go shopping, or just get out at a time when they can meet their friends.

A big problem looming on the horizon with an ageing population is that increasingly, many carers are trying to look after someone and hold down a job at the same time. Carers want, need, the same flexible working rights as those that currently exist for parents. After all, a parent's problems will eventually get easier. A carer's invariably get worse.

Now Darlington, which has supported carers for many years, has a Working Carers' Support Group, so people can get together with people in the same situation and know they're not alone.

Sunderland, meanwhile, has been awarded Beacon status for its work in supporting carers.

"Part of the problem is that many people don't even realise that they are carers," says Ailsa Martin, co-ordinator of the Sunderland Carers' Centre, a registered charity. "So we are now proactive in looking for carers and telling them what we can do to help. We work through council call centres, GP surgeries, anywhere where frontline staff can pick up on a situation.

"So many carers are self-effacing, thinking they are just doing what's expected of a husband, wife or parent and not realising the help that's available. We also want to make agencies more aware. Hospitals are sometimes the worst. Many consultants just didn't think about the day-to-day problems carers faced. But now we have nominations for good practice and this year's nominations include four GPs and a consultant in an acute hospital. That's progress.

There's still a lot of work to do at grass roots level to make sure that the basics are in place. "There's a lot of goodwill out there and a growing awareness but there's still a long way to go," says Ailsa. "Carers save the country £57bn a year in the care they do. They deserve to be listened to."

* Darlington Association on Disability Carers Support Service (01325) 357533. Sunderland Carers' Centre tel: 0191-567 3232. Carers' support services are also available in most towns in the region. www.carersonline.org.uk; www.carers.org.uk

CHARLIE'S STORY

COCKNEY Charlie Telling moved up to Sunderland when his wife wanted to be near her family. They were in their mid 40s, ten years ago, when Carol was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

"Though we realised it had actually been affecting her for many years before. I just kept telling her to take more water with it... "

At first, Charlie carried on with his taxi driving - until he too collapsed with heart problems. "My GP told me I was doing too much. Something had to go and, of course, it was the job. It'svery common for carers to get ill themselves."

For being Carol's full time carer he now gets carer's benefit of £182.80 a month - which he reckons works out at less than a pound an hour. "Don't talk to me about the minimum wage," he says.

For that he does everything for Carol "including very personal things" . He's also learnt to cook and clean and do the washing. "Until Carol was ill I didn't do a thing," he says.

"I think I knew where the vacuum cleaner lived but I didn't know how to change the bag. So it was a very steep learning curve."

He never considered not caring for his wife. "We promised in sickness and in health so that'swhat it's all about, isn't it?"

But sometimes he admits it's not easy. "I realised one day when things were bad, that I missed male company. I'd always worked in factories, or nights on the taxis," he says. "I could deal with drunks and hard lads, but now I was spending all my time with women."

A sign of the times is that there are plenty of other men in the same position, so Charlie joined a male carers' group in Sunderland. "There are about 70 of us altogether, but usually around 15 at a meeting. We're like a little band because we're all in the same boat, facing the same problems. We can ring each other up, go to the pub and we don't have to explain."

He is actively involved in trying to improve the lot of carers, especially financially. Meanwhile his wife is getting worse and will need more help.

Stacey's Story

STACEY Richards was six years old when her mother became ill with Huntington'sdisease. Now Stacey is 16, her mother Marie is 37 and has difficulties walking, talking and eating.

"I have to feed her directly into her stomach," says Stacey, who lives in Pennywell, Sunderland. "She needs a wheelchair when she goes out, but she can manage round the house. The worst thing is that her speech is very hard to understand. Nobody can understand her any more. I still can, just about, so I have to translate for her, but it's getting harder."

Instead of hanging round with her mates after school, Stacey has to come straight home to make sure her mother's all right. "I get out a bit, but I always have to make sure someone's here for my mum, so sometimes all my friends will be out but I won't be able to go. But it's always been like that, I've grown up with it and it's just what I'm used to."

If Stacey does well in her GCSEs., she hopes to take A levels and then study to be a vet.

"All the veterinary colleges are at the far ends of the country so it means I'll have to be far away. But I have a younger sister, Nicole, who's 12 now and helps a lot. By the time I'm at college, she will be able to take over looking after mum. We just get on with it. We've never really known anything different."

10THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT CARERS

1. One in eight adults are carers... around six million people.

2. Carers save the economy £57bn per year (equivalent to the NHS) which is an average of £10,000 per carer.

3. Overthree million people juggle care with work.

4. The main carer'sbenefit is worth just £44 for a minimum of 35 hours, the equivalent of £1.26 per hour.

5. 1.25 million people provide more than 50 hours of care per week.

6. People providing high levels of care are twice as likely to be permanently sick or disabled.

7. Over one million people care for more than one person.

8. 58 per cent of carers are women and 42 per cent are men.

9. By 2037, the number of carers could have increased to nine million.

10. Every year over two million people become carers.