Michelle cares for her 23-year-old daughter Alicia, who has a learning disability and a rare form of epilepsy.<\/p>\n
Alicia can have thousands of seizures every day and the condition means she needs constant supervision.<\/p>\n
She also cares for her parents who are in their 70s, as well as her sister and her nephew.<\/p>\n
“People say they appreciate unpaid carers, but we don’t feel appreciated, we feel used,” said Michelle.<\/p>\n
“Our love is used against us, because we love the people we care for, we give them our time.<\/p>\n
“I gave up work to care for my daughter but every system I’ve come across, I’ve had to fight for everything she’s entitled to and everything she needs and everything I need to keep her alive and safe in the home.”<\/p>\n
Michelle said she spent more than 90 hours a week caring – the carer’s allowance is \u00a383.30 which is available to anyone who provides at least 35 hours of care a week.<\/p>\n
“I don’t have breakfast because I can’t afford breakfast. I have one meal a day,” said Michelle.<\/p>\n
“With the cost of living, the price of food, petrol, gas and electric. It’s dire. There’s no money left.”<\/p>\n
The report said carers’ physical and mental health was deteriorating – some report isolation, burnout, and suicidal thoughts. It found that respite care was “non existent” in parts of Wales.<\/p>\n
Michelle said the Welsh government needed to put pressure on the UK government, which makes decisions on the carer’s allowance, to help support people in Wales.<\/p>\n
“Don’t say you appreciate – recognise us,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michelle cares for her 23-year-old daughter Alicia, who has a learning disability and a rare form of epilepsy.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-506654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}