When Olga’s father was diagnosed with cancer in 2015, Olga gave up work to become a full-time carer for him and support him through his illness, until he passed away in 2016. Her mother who suffered from osteoporosis, arthritis, and anaemia, needed more limited support to manage her health. After her father’s passing, Olga’s siblings took over the majority of the care responsibility for their mother, which meant she was able to return to work.

Two years after returning to work, her siblings experienced increasing responsibilities elsewhere, from children and grandchildren. To ensure their mother received the support she needed, Olga once again became a carer in 2018, this time for her mother.

Caring for her mother came with several challenges. For one, her mother lived 168 miles from Olga’s home in London, and while she didn’t need care all hours of the day, the support she did need, such as help with going to hospital, managing her affairs and sorting all her medication, was a challenge to do from afar.

“The doctors,” she says “didn’t seem to understand that I was involved in her care. At one point they changed her medication without consulting me. She got achy, and we couldn’t understand why until she asked about the blue pill she usually took. I was told they had taken her off it.” Having caring responsibilities from a distance was stressful. To help her mother to A&E, she had to drive for four hours, then wait to be seen at the hospital, only for her mother to be discharged to go home. “I had to ask what home she was discharged to. I didn’t live there; I couldn’t provide the care she might need after getting home. This was never considered by medical staff.”

After a fall, her mother experienced more trouble with daily tasks, and Olga asked care workers to come in to help. However, the challenges of distance caring weren’t resolved. She found it hard to judge how her mother felt and whether or not she was properly cared for, in spite of the care staff’s assurance that she was fine.

Olga had to regularly make the 168-mile-long drive to her mum to help her get treatment at hospital for years, and now the uncertainty of not knowing how her mother was doing led her to decide to move her mother in with her.

In December 2022, Olga’s mother passed away after suffering a serious fall. Inevitably, Olga’s role also involved managing her mother’s administrative affairs such as bills, appointments and selling her house.

One thing has been especially important for Olga in the last few years both while caring for her mother and after her passing: “If you are caring for an elderly relative, don’t hesitate to get a lasting power of attorney and a will. Get all the financial and legal sides sorted, it will make something so hard, much easier.

“I know we don’t want to think about what is going to come, but don’t think you’ve got plenty of time– you just don’t know.”

In Olga’s experience, managing someone else’s affairs was a frustrating process; “People and organisations seem surprised that you’re a carer – that you need to do all this for a person and have access to their information regarding bills, hospitals, medication. They don’t seem prepared for it!”

What made it harder was how clueless she felt initially. “I didn’t think of myself as a carer, but my mother’s doctors and GP saw me as her carer. Yet they never helped me get the support I needed as a carer.”

Only through Carers UK did she eventually find the resources she needed to identify herself as a carer, and be identified as one by her GP.

There is a real need to make it easier for people with caring responsibilities to be identified as carers, Olga urges. That would mean support would be available and individuals wouldn’t have to always fight for themselves to be recognised as a carer when many have more than enough to do without this constant battle. At the same time, she emphasises that if you are caring, “don’t be afraid to seek help! Organisations and government bodies won’t always understand you, but people will understand your predicament.”