23. Donna: A young carer for mother
Donna has her own health issues including anxiety attacks and agoraphobia. Donna's caring role has, at varying points in her life denied her positive socialisation experiences. As a result she struggles to interact with peers and lacks age appropriate experiences in a social sense.
Donna's mother has mental health problems, and due to her mental state tends to stay in bed most of the day. When she is up, it tends to be in the early hours of the morning, mum is in the habit of singing and waking Donna out of her sleep for company. Donna's caring responsibilities include organising the house, shopping, cooking and cleaning. Recently Donna had to organise a house removal due to the family being decanted from their previous home. Donna had to arrange most of this on her own including organising times for workmen to carry out work in both premises. This was a lot of work as there was only a two week time scale and there were extreme difficulties due to Donna's mum being very suspicious of new people, making it harder for other support to be in place for them both.
The areas of intervention we addressed with Donna were social interaction, confidence building, communication, problem solving and mental well being. Working with the medical professionals, we aimed to help support Donna to overcome her anxiety attacks and overcome her agoraphobia as these were huge barriers to getting back into work, education or training.
Through involvement with UPBEET Donna has been able to access one to one support. This support has had a positive impact helping Donna address the goals she set herself. Initially Donna cancelled one to one sessions fairly regularly due to her caring role and her own health problems. However, this was addressed with the keyworker and Donna's attendance has become far better over the course of her engagement with the project.
Donna now leaves the house and interacts with group sessions. She has taken part in UPBEET residentials - a huge challenge for her. Through involvement with UPBEET Donna has now made friends of her own age indicating her social interaction skills have improved. Donna values her one to ones and feels it really beneficial to speak to someone as her mother can really infuriate her at times. Donna completed a REHIS Elementary Food Hygiene certificate through UPBEET and used this for evidence for her Bronze Youth Achievement Award. She was accepted into college and also supported to apply for volunteering posts and employment.
The impact on Donna's mum has been more manageable with Donna working part-time and volunteering as she can work around her mum's needs and demands of her. UPBEET have offered family support for mum but that has been declined as mum is still suspicious of new people and no one gets into the house. Donna tells me her house is a shambles as mum won't let any workmen in leaving Donna to assemble all the furniture that gets delivered via online. UPBEET have tried to organise for a council handyman to carry out work to help the family but mum will not allow it to happen.
Donna is more confident within herself. Her anxiety attacks rarely happen now allowing Donna to have a better quality of life, go out with friends and have fun when mum allows this. UPBEET continues to support Donna on a one to one basis that is still a priority for Donna to continue to cope with her caring role. The work with Donna has been very much up and down over the course of her engagement, with lots of hurdles along the way, but the keyworker is confident that UPBEET is achieving the goals established with the client, especially overcoming the barriers to accessing work, education and training opportunities.