all of the professions that he needs<\/a>.”<\/p>\nSlieker said she had exhausted all other options for professional care.<\/p>\n
“He won’t allow other people in the house that he doesn’t know,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I [could] take him up to an organisation called St John of God in Karori for respite care to give myself a 10-day break, [but] he won’t go. I can’t force him.”<\/p>\n
Stories like hers had inspired Massey University psychology lecturer Dr Shanika Koreshi to research carer wellbeing.<\/p>\n
“From a research point of view, we don’t really know enough about how caregiving affects people’s lives, their relationships, well-being, employment and the ability to participate in society over the long term,” Koreshi said.<\/p>\n
“Statistics can tell us what is happening, but they can’t really tell us what it feels like.”<\/p>\n
More than anything else, Wendy Slieker said it felt lonely.<\/p>\n
“I had a life. I don’t have a life now,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I’m lonely. I’m extremely lonely. I don’t have the social contact that I once had. Your friends move on, they’ve got their own lives. They’re not there for you.”<\/p>\n
Carers NZ chief executive Laurie Hilsgen said a recent wellbeing survey showed that was a common feeling.<\/p>\n
“Almost 80 percent of those carers say they feel lonely or isolated,” Hilsgen said.<\/p>\n
“Caring can mean that you spend more time at home, less opportunity maybe to participate in activities, hobbies, to maintain friendships and other relationships.”<\/p>\n
![\"Carers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/4KM2T9X_LHilsgen_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Carers NZ chief executive Laurie Hilsgen.<\/p>\n
SUPPLIED<\/p>\n
Dr Koreshi’s study invited carers to submit anonymous stories they wouldn’t normally share out loud.<\/p>\n
She said the physical and emotional toll was enormous.<\/p>\n
“There’s the physical side of it first. Many informal carers are providing around 30 hours of care each week,” she explained.<\/p>\n
“But what really stands out to me would be the emotional pressures.<\/p>\n
“I mean, one participant told us that it’s actually easier caring for sick people at work than caring for her own disabled son at home because at work her shift ends.”<\/p>\n
In the years since the accident, Wendy Slieker said she had found activities her husband could engage with to regain some autonomy.<\/p>\n
“I taught him how to use his computer, [and] I’ve taught him how to use a pod coffee machine. You wouldn’t think that a little pod coffee machine could be so valuable, but for him it gives him a little bit of independence,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Or the other thing that he does is he obsessively does Sudoku that I print out for him online.”<\/p>\n
But despite the occasional “lovely moment”, she said she wouldn’t wish her position on anybody.<\/p>\n
“This is a lifelong role. I am never ever going to get out of it,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I am never going to retire because as long as I’m alive and as long as he’s alive, I have a caregiving role to fulfil.”<\/p>\n
Dr Koreshi said her goal was to inform nationwide change.<\/p>\n
“We are hoping that we could build an evidence base that directly informs how we support caregivers,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Beyond that, we are also hoping to put the data or the stories that we get from this into developing a caregiving wellbeing measure which can track how caregiving shapes people’s life over time.”<\/p>\n
Shanika Koreshi hoped her research would build towards a larger programme to change how caregiving was measured and supported in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New research examines pressures facing family carers Morning Report A 70-year-old woman caring for her mentally disabled husband…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":["post-744231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}