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Report transcript in: Partners in Care and Health - Information and Advice - Sense Making Story May 2024
Please Report the Errrors?
I love helping people.
I just love doing stuff for people
that makes them
appreciative and happy.
Anything that makes
the other person happy
is definitely my my goal.
Thank you for sharing that
and
what is important to you and your family,
my Children
and their success in life
in anything that they want to do,
not what I want them to do, but
what they're passionate about. I
would support them in anything.
I. I am really, really passionate about my Children and
and their future,
and I was wondering if you would share with me a bit of your journey
of being becoming
having been a carer.
Wow, that's a long journey. And
it started off. I didn't grow up with my mom. I grew up with my dad,
but as a child, I have always wanted to know who my mother was.
So going back to Sierra Leone
in 1993
to go and look for my mother I. I originally went there for something else.
My friend was getting married
and I was bridesmaid,
so I took the opportunity when I went to Sierra
Leone to go and look for my mother as well
and when I found her, she was in a really,
really bad state.
And I thought to myself,
There's no way I'm going back to England and leaving this woman in this country.
And so I packed her bags,
stood her on the plane and came over to England
with me being British. It was easy,
But with her it wasn't because she was a British. She didn't have a British passport.
And I remember the immigration officer saying to me,
How long is your mom staying for?
And I said forever
and he said, Well,
that's not possible at the moment,
but we are gonna stamp
out for six months
and you have the opportunity
to apply,
um, to immigration
and take it from there.
And that's how my journey started with me
becoming my mom's car.
When we got to the GP, my mom wasn't speaking at all.
When I found my mom, she couldn't speak. She was just smiling,
picking food from the floor. People were throwing food at her.
She was just in a bad state.
So when I got here, the GP said to me, how long has she been like this?
And I said I haven't got a clue.
I said the only thing I know is I met her like this,
but growing up as a little child in England before we went to Sierra
Leone at the age of six. My mom, my mom, was fine.
They took us back to Sierra Leone. We went back to Sierra Leone with my dad,
but my mom stayed in England,
and over the years I got to realise that she had a mental issue all along those years.
That's why my dad didn't take her back to Sierra Leone with with her
and they separated because of her
mental, um,
and issues.
So, um, going back to me, bringing her to England
and the GP saying, Well, we need to investigate
and find out exactly what's happened,
Why she is like this. She is not speaking.
She was just not doing anything for herself.
She needed help with virtually everything. Everything.
Getting up in the morning,
having her breakfast, getting the shower. I had to do all that,
and at the time I was in a full time employment.
But luckily for me, I found another Sierra Leone
who lived close by, and she was a child minder,
and luckily she said to me, I'll look after your mom
while she at work.
I'm not asking for anything, but
whatever little you give me, I appreciate it.
And that's how I started,
you know, going to work At the end of the month. I would pay for
her care through this woman
and
down the line. I got myself into some financial difficulty,
and even though I was still caring for my mom
and I was not paying my rent,
I was walking and I became pregnant,
and the child's dad
left as well.
So I had
my pregnancy to deal with the baby to deal with when she was eventually born
and my mother to deal with.
So that's my key I'm gonna go with
now. My mother and my daughter
as a single parent
and I started claiming housing benefits,
so that got me into trouble.
And I ended up in, um, Halloween.
So I had a six month
prison sentence,
and at
the time I was heavily pregnant
with my daughter.
And whilst I was in there, I met this woman.
You know, we were discussing
You don't look like somebody that she's been breathing. What are you in here for?
You know, we had a laugh about it
and, you know, I explained what was going.
And then she said to me, Well, who's looking after your mother?
I said, Well, she's home with my sister
because I have There's five of us.
But I was the one who was doing the care, you know,
since I was the one who went back home and brought her back.
Everybody was like saying, You've taken on a boarding
that you might not be able to deal with.
But
when I was
when I was given the custodial
sentence, the
lady
who represented me
asked me
what would What should they do with my mother?
They were going to give her over to social services, and I said no.
My sisters would look after her.
So she stayed with my sisters.
And while I was in there explaining this thing to this woman,
she was the one who explained it to me that the services that can help you
look after your mom. You need to
contact
um, Oxley
and I am through all this information
immediately. I came out of
prison I
contacted the Greenwich Care Centre
through the Greenwich Care Centre.
They were able to support me as a carer
and give me all the information I needed
to get my mom the right treatment.
Get my mom a psychiatric because she didn't have
a psychiatrist at the
moment.
It's OK.
Uh,
so luckily,
I was able to get
get into Ox.
She go to a psychiatrist, they kind of
realised that she had paranoid schizophrenic.
She was paranoid schizophrenic.
She had vascular dementia,
and he become became diabetic as well.
But
you know, luckily for me,
I always say that, you know,
sometimes
bad things happen
and good things come out of it.
So
Oxley is now
The doctors started treating her,
giving her the right medication.
Yeah, they got me a care to come to the house
to help me. The care coordinator.
She had a PA package.
And,
you know, to this day, I'm grateful for all that.
And,
you know, she stayed with me for 39 years
until I myself had a breakdown and became ill.
And then I decided it was time for me to give that up
to, um to now in a nursing home.
But I still do the care you
go
because even today
I had to take her for her dentist appointment.
But the good thing is, at least I sleep at night
because when she was home, it was hard work.
You know, she gets up in the middle of the night
and I didn't have a night car because the
car
comes in the morning.
And then she used to go to a day centre,
which helped as well.
They gave me that respite.
He would pick her up in the morning
and we
can get back down about four o'clock.
But because of Covid,
all that stopped
during Covid,
I had to look after her again. 24 7.
The carers were not coming in anymore.
And this is when I had my my own mental breakdown
and I was admitted to the query
and, um, my care. You
all had to
be reduced. I, I thought to myself,
I think I've done enough.
It's about time I look after myself.
And so she's now in a nursing home
and things are getting better for me.
Mm,
that that's
that's for you.
Good to hear.
It's certainly
painful to hear what you're saying and I appreciate
your honesty.
Um,
I was really struck by if I'm honest with you and I'm just gonna be really honest
how open you are about going to prison.
And when I'm listening to you, I was thinking,
Oh, my gosh. So many people might be
doing things
to care for loved ones
just because they don't know what to do or where to go.
Yeah,
Yeah,
I was shocked when this woman was giving me all this information. I was like,
Are you for real? Is this true?
And you know,
there are things out there, but people don't know about it.
Even
two weeks ago,
I started volunteering for the Greenwich Career Centre
because I want I am so passionate about people
knowing what's available
and being aware of all the support.
They can have careers
either paid or unpaid
because,
uh, in
like, if you would have had that information
at that time
Oh, there's a lot I could have done. I could have saved myself
so much. I could have saved myself going
into the debts that I went to.
I could have saved myself taking on such a
huge load on my Why is it
important for you to share this story?
Because I just think
life can be unfair
unnecessarily. You know,
we need to be able to
be open enough
to let our our our own disadvantages, for instance,
be an advantage to somebody out there
who in the long run might not.
We hopefully won't end up the way I ended up in prison,
although for me, my prison story
for me personally, it's it's
it's a good journey in itself because something good came out of it.
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