Family and Ann

K101 An introduction to health and social care
TMA 01
Part A
Introduction
In this assignment I am going to look at the difficulties and rewards experienced by carers, especially those who care for a family member. I am going to look closely at the role of one such carer, a 37 year old woman called Ann who fell into the unexpected role of caring for her stepfather who has Parkinson’s disease.
I would like to first define the word ‘carer’ a carer is someone who supports and cares for someone else because of age, illness or disability. The care is may be carried out by a family member, a friend or a neighbour.
Difficulties
Ann experiences a wealth of difficulties caring for Angus, she encounters emotional, physical, mental, social and financial demands as she tries to fulfil her role as carer. Ann was thrown into the role of carer when her mother had asked her to take of Angus on her deathbed. It was a role expected of Ann, she was the woman in the house and it was a role she had not been trained for. Caring for Angus presented many difficulties, Ann had given up her job to care for Angus thinking it would lessen the pressure she was feeling at that time, on the contrary, Ann now was experiencing the financial impact of only having her husband Bobs wage to support the family, this puts considerable strain on Ann as she is now solely reliant on her husband financially and the family are at risk of poverty. Bob and Angus have a strained relationship with both battling for Ann’s attention, Angus reminds Bob that he owns the house in which they all live in, this is demoralising for Bob. Ann states during interview that she feels like “piggy in the middle” torn between her obligation to Angus and to her own husband and child, Ann’s daughter Zoe has recently been diagnosed with dyslexia, she is experiencing difficulties at school, Zoe try’s to seek out support from her mother, Ann however is totally overwhelmed with caring for Angus and is unable to provide her

References: Care: A family affair (Jan Walmsley) Part B I began my essay by first defining what a Carer is, that helped me to differentiate between a Carer and a professional care worker and from that it enabled me to make a clear separation between the two roles. I found it beneficial to take notes from each transcript from unit one, this highlighted the key difficulties that Ann was experiencing. I then decided I would separate my assignment into 4 headings: 1. Introduction 2. Difficulties 3. Rewards 4. Conclusion This allowed me to structure each topic accordingly and to avoid different concepts leaking into one another. I found myself very enthusiastic when it came to highlighting the difficulties, they seemed to be endless and from the transcripts it was evident how overwhelmed Ann was caring for Angus, Ann seemed to be getting pulled in lots of different directions as she struggled to care for Angus whilst maintaining some sort of normal family life. I felt it important to include the difficulties Ann was experiencing trying to hold her family together, because Bob is not a relative to Angus, it seems much more practical to him to put Angus in a home, it is obviously more complicated for Ann because of the promise she made to her mother and also because she does love her stepfather. I could establish through the transcripts that Bob and Angus’s strained relationship made things more difficult for Ann, this no doubt contributed to the depressive feelings Ann was already experiencing. The rewards Ann received were much scarcer, it was difficult finding the silver lining in such a bleak situation. I have found this assignment a learning curve, I haven’t written an assignment in 15 years and I found it a daunting process, mainly because my technical skills are poor. That is an area I hope to improve as the course progresses.