Making the 'invisible army' seen | Carer's Week with Melissa Reader | Club Sandwich
In this bonus episode, Sarah Macdonald is joined by Melissa Reader to discuss new research into Australia's 'invisible army' of sandwich generation carers.
Ageing parents? You've got them. We've got you.
Vera is your candid companion as you care for an ageing parent. Have a look at https://vera.guide.
FACES (Families for Aged Care Equity and Support) is a family-led campaign asking for one honest count of the number of people waiting for their aged care funding and the people who die while they're waiting. Add your name at vera.guide/faces.
Put The Kettle On — Vera's free conversation guide: the five questions worth asking your ageing mum or dad, at putthekettleon.com.au
Credits:
Sarah Macdonald – Host + Executive Producer
Melissa Reader – Commissioning Editor, Executive Producer + Clubber
Justin McArthur – Executive Producer + Editor, for P. Zinner Podcasts (https://pzinner.com.au)
Thanks and kudos to Sean Wayland for our theme music Club Sandwich — hear more at https://seanwayland.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Club Sandwich is recorded on Gadigal Land, home of the EORA Nation. We pay our respects to elders past and present. Always was, always will be.
Hello. Welcome to a very special little drop for Club Sandwich because it is Carers Week. And guess what? If you are in the club, the is the sandwich club. You are a carer. Hello, Melissa, CEO of Vera, who commissions the podcast. Hey. Hi. So we are doing something very special for Carers Week coming up, aren't we?
I think we're trying to make a little bit more sense of Carers Week because I don't think that many of us in the sandwich would ever use the word carer to describe what we do. We're daughters and sons and brothers and sisters and partners just doing what needs to be done in a family at all ends in all directions. So Carers Week is like an interesting week, but we also thought it was the right week to bring some of these new numbers to the Clubbers.
Well, we've actually done some research.
We've done some really interesting research.
We've counted the generation. Can't believe it. That are in the sandwich.
We've counted the invisible army. Sarah.
So no one's counted us before.
No one's counted us before. We've always been kind of caught up in definitions that are too, too broad or maybe too narrow and frankly too old. So those dusty numbers are off the table. We have our own numbers now, and we're gonna be bringing them to you on Thursday. But we just wanted to share a little bit of how we've been thinking about this and how we thought about arriving at a much more accurate number of the sandwich generation in Australia. It's the first time this has ever been done. It's the first national count.
I mean, doesn't that say at all that no one's even bothered to count us?
Isn't it about bloody time that we had a number to point to?
Yeah. So we've got to stand up and be counted.
We are standing up and being counted.
Excellent.
And it is statistically validated research. So we've done this in partnership with YouGov. These numbers are representative of the whole of the country. And for any of the numbers nerds out there, you will be able to dive deep on the methodology and get all the granularity that you might be looking for.
And so why haven't we been counted before? Why has it been such an invisible.
Yeah, because we have so much data right. In the ABS and in census. But what the government and ABS have tended to do is Find a measure of all carers in the country. And like that looks very different. That could be a mother caring for a disabled child or someone caring for someone with a very long illness. Like it just takes so many shapes and forms and that number is around 3 million. But that doesn't actually show us the sandwich generation within that number. So we wanted to be much more precise.
So it doesn't. Yeah, so it shows people caring and
it could be a mother illusion of caring.
But it's not counting those that are doing multiple layers of caring at once.
Yeah, that's right. That are in midlife, managing all the layers of life and taking on the increasing care needs of their aging parents. One thing that we thought was really important in the way that we defined this is that you don't have to have kids to be in the sandwich. There is just some old definitional stuff floating around that it's time to get rid of. We wanted to take a real look at what the shape of modern family looks like in Australia and be much more inclusive. So this is about the layers of life, regardless of who's in them and that you are taking on increasing care needs for ageing parents between 35 to 70.
Yeah. So it's not about having a kid in the sandwich. It can be about having a job, having other big demands on in your life.
You could have toddlers, kiddols, you could have a 30 year old, you could not have kids at all. You might take care of nieces and nephew, whatever that looks like you are going to be counted.
So this is very different to what's been done before. How are we going to define the
sandwich generation so very tightly? Ages 35 to 70 in Australia today that are caring for ageing parents. We asked people if they were doing one of six things at least once a week and it's not giving mum a call at 6 o' clock on a Sunday night. That's really good, really helpful. But we were looking for more evidence. So it's about taking your elderly mum or dad to medical appointments, helping them with cleaning or shopping or medical care, stepping in and doing those extra things that your parents can no longer manage on their own. Now a lot of people would just call that help, they wouldn't call it care. So we were really careful with the language we used. But the number that we've come up with measures people that are doing one of those six tasks at least once a week. And of course a lot of people are doing them a lot more frequently than once a week.
But that was Our baseline. And they're probably doing more than one task.
Totally. Maybe for more than one parent, maybe for an in law as well.
Yes, exactly. Yeah. Just going from one place to the retirement village to the age slightly fried feeling to the workplace.
I think we both had that slightly fried feeling as we arrived here today. We know it, the listeners know it.
Yeah. And those quick conversations of how's your mum? Or how's your dad? And so if we're really defining it very carefully, this is interesting because even though, as we said right from the beginning, it's carers week, often if you're in the sandwich, you don't see yourself as a carer, but we see you as someone who is carenting.
Yes. You are part of the invisible army.
Yeah.
Now, I personally have a really big problem with the label of carer. It's not something that the majority of people self identify with. Do you think of yourself as a carer?
No, not until I started doing this word.
Not until someone waved the word in front of you and maybe made you make sense of it.
So I remember even Goha in the Compass episode we did and she is
the head, she's the CEO of Kota New South Wales, the Council of the Aging.
And she was. Didn't realize she was a carer till the doctor gave her the hospital discharge.
Hospital discharge.
And it said carer in extreme stress. And she was like, who's that?
Oh, that's me, that's me. So I think that we've got a little bit lost in the bureaucratic language and unfortunately what it means is that services that have been set up to support the work that the sandwich generation are doing, they have the label carer in front of them. So Carer Gateway, Carer payments, carer services. I think that a lot of people just don't even see themselves in that offer because they're just a daughter or a son doing what needs to be done. So there is a big bigger bureaucratic argument behind this around how some of those really wonderful services like Carer Gateway are trying to reach the people that need them and unfortunately that's resulting in like less than 5% take up of some of those services.
Oh, my gosh.
That's pretty terrible, right?
Yeah. So there needs to be. That's why you're doing it.
Right? That's why we did it.
To identify who needs the assistance.
Yeah. We've got to mobilise this community and to do that you've got to have a defined number and you've got to really understand who's in it and what they're doing. And so that's what this research is going to serve up on Thursday 15th
October on a platter.
On a platter. Layers of information, Sarah. Layers of learning coming to the clubbers. A little bit of parsley here and
there, a little bit of parsley on the side.
Little bit of Greg sprinkles for any succession fans out there.
Okay, excellent. Yeah, brilliant. Without throwing up in our mask. So what can people do if they want to find out about this and get ready for this? Because this is gonna actually see you and hopefully that means you're gonna be valued more. Cause the whole system, as we often say, depends on you.
I can make a promise to listeners that they will see themselves in this research. They absolutely will. And we are going to then take this research out to the community, out to media, out to employers. I'm doing a big bold underline there and out out to government and policymakers with another triple bold underline. Because this is actually a really significant group and they're underrepresented, they're unsupported. We can't put a number on it. So we will have that number and we will be doing all the lobbying and advocacy work off the back of
it, which you count and you matter and that's why we're counting you. So if people want to find out when the report comes out, they can pre register. Yeah, yeah.
So we've got an early sign up link at Vera Guide sign up, Vera Guide sign up. You can just jump in there and leave your email and you'll be one of the first to get a copy of the of the report when it's released on Thursday. But also, Sarah, we're going to release an episode. We are on Thursday.
So there'll be a whole episode detailed.
We won't like drag you through the methodology and the detail. We're going to talk to you about the six things that we found that we think are really important for the sandwich generation.
Excellent. All right. Yeah. You can't kind of help what you can't see.
You can't fix what you're not counting. You've got to measure it and understand it. And we couldn't see anyone else in the country doing that on behalf of the sandwich generation. And so we thought, well, we should.
Yeah. Because every time I write an article I'm like, how many of us are there? Oh, we don't know.
Yeah. And that thing that you've always talked to me about where people say to you, I'm not sure if this counts, but, like, that's the hesitation and the uncertainty and that's where we want to help people. Be really clear. You are, you are part of this invisible army. You deserve to be recognized and supported.
Excellent. Stay tuned. On Thursday, the episode will drop. If you subscribe to the podcast, it'll just come in. If you don't subscribe, subscribe now and you'll get that in your inbox.
Yes, you will. And if you've got questions like, just hit us up, you've got the email@hellolubsandwich.community we want to hear from you. Tell us if it resonates. Tell us what you're curious about. We'll be doing a lot on socials over the next couple of weeks, so jump in and get involved.
You've got them, we've got you. And now you're actually counted.
You make one phone call to get help for your ageing mum or dad and suddenly you are drowning in acronyms and waiting lists. The aged care system, it's a bit of a wall of these acronyms, phone calls, waiting lists, and nobody's really giving you a map or a guide. Well, we see you. We want you to know that you're not behind. You haven't left it too late, and wherever you're starting from is the right place to start. You don't have to hold all of this in your head on your own. And you can keep what matters most to your aging mum or dad right at the centre of every decision. That's what Vera is here for, any time of the day or night at Vera Guide. It's free, safe and secure, built right here in Australia with families and the experts who know this journey.