Towards the carer friendly university, hosted by Anglia Ruskin University

Earlier this year Professor Marie-Pierre Moreau published a report funded by the Society on Higher Education looking at the experiences of senior academics with care-giving responsibilities at 17 different institutions across the UK. The findings were presented at an event at ARU and Ruth Feather went along to find out more…

I attended this event in my role as Co-chair of the Sheffield Hallam University Parent and Carer Staff Network and as both a parent and a carer I was not sure exactly what to expect. I was particularly struck on the day by the inclusivity of the event and the effort to make everyone feel welcome and involved. The word carer is fraught with difficulties, hard to define and can even come with a stigma when associated with caring for people with mental illness or addictions. We have found  as a network that people struggle to identify themselves as carers because they have an image of what that means which they can’t quite apply to themselves. The Carer’s Trust defines a carer as “anyone who cares, unpaid, for a friend or family member who due to illness, disability, a mental health problem or an addiction cannot cope without their support.” However, I have come to realise that this is just a starting point. At the event it was suggested that in order to develop a more inclusive culture, employers need to start with a base line assumption that all staff will have caring responsibilities even if they do not define themselves as carers.

Professor Marie-Pierre Moreau of Anglia Ruskin University presented the case for research in the field of carers’ experiences in higher education with passion and a sense of inclusivity; there was a lot of talk about visibility. Most caring responsibilities tend to be invisible, and so long as they are not putting that person at a disadvantage then there is often no reason to highlight them. We all have families and friends and feel some level of responsibility towards them. In short, we all care about those people close to us. Professor Moreau talked about invisibility and the way that caring responsibilities become “hyper-visible” during crisis. When that person you care about becomes ill, or incapacitated in some way you can suddenly find yourself in the role of a carer. This happened to me four years ago when my husband had a nervous breakdown but it did not occur to me that I should think of myself as a carer until much more recently, although the levels of care I provide are much reduced now – at least on good days!. I think this reluctance to identify as a carer comes from a lack of awareness in our society of what it actually means. Carers are taken for granted and so we take ourselves for granted.

I was particularly touched by the story of one participant in Professor Moreau’s video ‘Carers and careers in Academia’ a senior academic who felt compelled to quit her role while caring for her husband who had cancer. She was told later that she could have taken unpaid leave during this period. She says on the video that perhaps she should have been more proactive, looked into her options before quitting but the group at yesterday’s event overwhelmingly agreed that she had been let down by a working culture where the idea of taking leave for caring responsibilities is not second nature. There once was a time when working mothers might assume that they would have to quit a job on having a baby, but we have thankfully moved on. This is not to say that a system of paid carer’s leave should be established in law with the same rights as maternity leave, but that we could raise awareness of what people are entitled to so they don’t miss out. The video is well worth a watch as it raises many important issues which can be applied to professional services staff as well as academics.

If you think you might be a carer, the Parent and Carers Staff Network would love to hear from you. Email  us at shuparentsandcarers@shu.ac.uk with any questions or to ask to join. Members receive our newsletters as well as blog posts like this one, invitations to a range of events and more. We offer support to anyone with caring responsibilities whether for children, or adults.