Editor

On Sunday evening the UK came out to "clap for our carers" to mark the 72nd birthday of the National Health Service and to mark the formal end of the scheme first instigated a few days after lockdown, started as a way to thanking key workers.

When the scheme was first launched my initial reaction was "At last, perhaps now we carers can get a dialogue going about what it means to be a carer!" but then, as is so often the case, the mass media got involved and as has happened on so many occasions we carers, both paid and unpaid, were shunted off the front page.

According to Ceredigion council, there are 7,494 carers (approximately 10 per cent of the county’s population), based on the 2001 Census returns, and of those at least 1,981 (26 per cent) are people caring for more than 50 hours every week.

Those carers are in receipt of Carer’s Allowance, a UK-wide benefit that pays them £67.25 a week. This means that for the minimum requirement to gain the payment (35 hours caring a week) they get £1.92 an hour and for those, like me, who in effect spend their whole lives caring, get 40p an hour.

This figure of 40p an hour is only nine pence HIGHER than the average wage of American prisoners (when allowing for currency conversions), a calculation that leaves me to believe something that I think the mass media overlook.

Carers in the United Kingdom are viewed by the UK Government in the same light as prisoners.

This is why, I ask everyone who clapped on Sunday evening to think "Did

I clap for a carer, or did I clap for the NHS?". If you believe that you clapped for the NHS, then on Thursday, 9 July, I want you to leave your homes at 6pm, knock on your next door neighbour’s door and ask "Are you a carer?". If they answer "I am" reply "What can I do to help you in your caring?" and then act on that request.

I can assure you that it will allow not only those 7,500 carers in Ceredigion a few moments to be a person again, but also make the rest of the county aware of the fact there could be a carer next door to them (and they have never known about it!).

Harry Hayfield