COVID-19 and Caring

Like many people the beginning of 2020 showed promising new opportunities. For my family, this was the first time that we had qualified for support coordination from the NDIS. With support coordination we would be able to establish a stable caring routine, expand our support system, and continue building my brothers independence.

We hit the ground running the moment we received our new plan. We excitingly and frantically worked with our new support coordinator to set up my brother’s new support system, keen to start services as soon as possible. While there was more initial up-front work in setting this new support system, it promised more independence for me and my mother as primary carers. We were hopeful that this would be the year that we finally could properly utilise my brothers NDIS plan…

Obviously, things did not entirely go the way that we planned.

The support system that we had intricately built to help support not only my brother but his carers quickly evaporated in the early stages of quarantine and lockdown. Like everyone else during lockdown my brother’s interactions with the outside world were completely severed. His existing and new services were abruptly halted with no notice and no indication of when they would return. The ambiguity of the situation stressed all of us as we were so excited to start this next chapter.

However, the pandemic offered me something that I had never before had much of, time. It slowed everything down, giving me more time to organise work with the service coordinator to develop a personalised support plan for my brother. On a personal level, working and studying from home eradicated my commute, leaving me with three new hours each day to be guiltlessly used on myself. I had so much free time that I even managed to pick up a hobby or two! If anyone had told me that I would have time for hobbies in a year where I was working two jobs, completing an honours full time, and becoming a much more primary carer for my brother, I would not have believed them. 

Prior to COVID-19, trying to balance caring with work/study felt like an unstoppable force clashing against an immovable object. But working from home has allowed me to manage and organise myself in a way that drastically eased the strain on both of these responsibilities. It allowed me to work over a longer stretch of time but with more breaks to answer quick phone calls or help my brother with tasks around the house during the typical 9-5 hours. COVID-19 has been the essential push to see the mass adoption of flexible work arrangements by workplaces and it seems that flexible work is here to stay for carers and other workers.   

While working from home has been incredibly helpful in managing my workload and responsibilities, I have found that the office is an important space for me as a carer. After the first few weeks of working from home, I made an active effort to work from UTS office. I found simply by being physically at the office it made the residency even richer and opening up more opportunities for me to engage with UTS. Being away from home drew a strong boundary between being a carer and being a young person for me. In talking with other carers, it seemed that perceiving the office as a space of reprieve and respite from caring responsibilities was a common experience!

I recognise that the benefits of working from home are a privilege that is not afforded to other carers. For many carers the pandemic has compounded upon their stress as indicated in the 2020 carers’ survey which we will look at in our next blog post.

Stay tuned!