When Jasmine and her twin sister Emma were just 18 and starting university, their peers were going out and doing “normal teenage things” – going clubbing, dating, and socialising with friends.
Their greatest concern was “whether or not mum was going to be alive when we got home”.
The girls cared for their mother, who was diagnosed with scleroderma—a rare, long-term degenerative disease, full-time and they started when they were just eight-years-old.
After receiving some difficult news about her mother’s declining health, Young Carers ambassador Jasmine Wratten says she and her sister attended a Carers Foundation’s retreat for the first time, and it changed their lives.
“The program practically saved my life,” she said.
“At the time our mum was quite sick, she was getting to the stage where she was almost in palliative care and the doctors had pretty much said there is nothing we can do to help.
“I felt very alone, I felt like no one was willing to help.
“We went up to the retreat and met people in similar situations and it changed my entire viewpoint of what I was going through because for the first time I had met people who understood and cared.”
The Carers Foundation Australia provides unique wellness programs and retreats to support the emotional, physical and mental wellbeing of unpaid carers like Jasmine and Emma.
The community organisation recently received an Investing in Queensland Women grant to help continue to deliver these programs.
Founding director Ronnie Benbow says workshops on mental health resilience for female teenage carers will be funded by a $10,000 grant and have a “powerful” impact on young lives.
“What the Carers Foundation does is care for carers and we identify that there are a lot of young carers out in the community that are unidentified,” Mrs Benbow said.
“We focus on workshops teaching them how to deal with the stress they face every day because they see things and do things that no child should have to do.
“It’s hidden society, I call them the unsung heroes because they do what they do out of love but they don’t get any recognition, support or pay and it ultimately affects their own health.
Mrs Benbow says she knows professionally and personally the relentless demands and debilitating stress that family carers endure daily.
“When I was a student nurse I would go out in the communities and I would see the families that were actually in a worse position than the person they were caring for and I used to worry.
“They don’t get time to look after themselves, they are working around the clock and they are dealing with emergencies and dealing with life threatening situations so they don’t get time to care for themselves.
“We focus on workshops teaching them how to deal with the stress they face every day because they see things and do things that no child should have to do.”
Mrs Benbow says they are not eligible to receive government funding so the organisation is “reliant on grants, donations and fundraisers”.
“It’s hard because we see the demand and the need and we’re the only charity in Australia that provides these programs for carers at no cost.
Who Cares? TeenCarer Project is one of 34 community organisations to receive an Investing in Queensland Women grant.
Others in the Logan area include the Centre Against Sexual Violence Inc at Waterford ($2400) which will host a workshop to enable female survivors of sexual assault to openly discuss sexual violence and connect with support services; Stronger Pathways Incorporated at Meadowbrook ($9639) which will free vehicle safety checks; and Young Change Agents at Loganlea ($10,000) which will support young women, aged 12-25.
