A REDITCH woman has praised the work of a care agency which helps her children live independent lives- but the staff have gone one further and are now raising money for unpaid carers like her.
Donna Giles contacted the Standard to show her appreciation of Carewatch Redditch and Bromsgrove, the agency who help her son Nathan and daughter Cerys in their everyday lives.
But the support has now come full circle with the agency helping Donna, and family and friends like her who take care of a loved one with learning or physical disabilities. They were wearing Christmas hats through the sweltering heat for Carers Care Line, who are at risk of closure after losing their national funding.
Donna said: “They help them with everything from getting washed and dressed in the morning to going shopping.
“Their helps enables them to have lives independent of mum and dad. so when Cerys goes shopping it’s like she has her big sisters with her. it isn’t like she is off out with her carer.
“Nathan has gone off to work experience today with his carer Simon. Without him I don’t know if he would be able to go.
“So I just want to say a big thank you to the carers who help our family in so many ways.”
The team were out in force with some of their service users on Thursday (August 25) outside Asda in Redditch asking for donations to the cause as part of their ‘carers help carer’ motto. They raised just over £200 for the charity.
Manager Sarah Harris said: “We heard how Carer’s Carline had lost their Lottery funding and so because we are carers who care we wanted to try and do something to help.
“So often family member get forgotten and left behind. We try to include them and offer our support but we hated the though that something is essential as this might go away.
“Carers like Donna, who is just absolutely fantastic, need this support.
“There were so many people we saw in Redditch who did not even know this service existed so to be able to tell those carers about this support was fantastic.”
Fiona Mitchell, manager at Carer Car line said: “It is really lovely they are fund-raising for us. It came totally out of the blue.
“It shows that we all need to work together because Donna needs the support from those carers to look after her children, but we can support Donna as well and to have that recognition of what we do really makes a difference.”
Donations and funding have set the charity up to survive this financial year but the team are desperately trying to secure the cash in the long term to keep them going.
To donate visit http://bit.ly/2c0b3r1
