Charlotte: 48% of cancer carers are working either full time or part time.
That’s potentially half a million people who are trying to juggle work
with caring for someone with cancer.
Claire: The company’s got its job to do
and it’s got to be successful
but you need to feel you've got some sort of tangible support around you.
Carol: I felt I was very much the problem case in the company
and all I was wanting to do was support my husband
whilst performing my duties in the workplace.
Charlotte: Macmillan defines a carer as someone who’s looking
after a person living with cancer who couldn’t manage without that help.
Carers have a range of responsibilities when they’re
looking after someone with cancer
and that can include things like personal care
shopping and cooking and cleaning,
but it also involves often getting involved with treatment.
We find that caring for someone with cancer
can affect you physically, emotionally
it can affect your work, your finances.
If they’re worried about the person at home that’s ill
it makes it harder for them to perhaps focus and give work everything.
Carol: Leo was a major in the British Army in the Royal engineers
and Leo was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease
which is a cancer of the blood.
He was actually diagnosed just after we got back from our
honeymoon back in 1993.
When we realised that Leo was going to need to go into
hospital for treatment, I decided to keep working as normal.
My view is that you need two working adults to pay a mortgage
and also wanted the normality of going to work every morning.
Charlotte: I think it’s important for managers to be sensitive
to the fact that becoming a carer can happen overnight.
It can take the employee a while to actually adjust to that
and obviously they’re under a lot of emotional stress
because somebody close to them is ill.
So just being sensitive to the confidential and upsetting nature of the situation
that they’re dealing with.
Claire: My sister Lizzie, graphic designer, very artistic lady.
We hadn’t known any of the symptoms were leading to cancer,
but she was diagnosed and told she had maybe even only
days or weeks to live.
On the day that Lizzie was diagnosed, when I got home in the afternoon
having seen her I immediately thought I’ve got to sort out work.
It was an automatic decision to be Lizzie’s carer,
but obviously I was very concerned about maintaining my quality of work as much as I could.
You immediately feel how the heck are you going to achieve that
you know, it’s a conflict you don’t think you’re going to have
and nothing else compares to that sort of conflict really.
Charlotte: Carers do have some rights in the workplace.
One of the most important ones is the right to
request flexible working.
This isn't automatically a right to receive it
but employers do need to consider such requests on their merit.
Another right that employees have is the right to time off in emergencies.
This may be unpaid, but they do have this right
if the situation arises where they need to care for somebody
at short notice.
Claire: For a number of weeks things worked fine in a sense because
I was able to be flexible.
They gave me a laptop to work at home.
I used to get up at 5, work from 6 til 9, pick up Lizzie
take her to the hospital, go through the chemotherapy
bring her back, either sit with her
or sometimes she’d just be exhausted
and then I’d just go back to the laptop
and work until 10 / 11 at night.
Carol: During the period for one of Leo’s bone marrow transplants
the most practical thing to do was actually live
in the hospital during the week.
Sleeping at the end of his bed on a fold up bed.
Some of the time I would find myself being woken up
in the middle of the night by a team of doctors coming in
to administer treatment, or to revive Leo in the worst case
and then of course in the morning, get up and go to work.
At that time I was basically in survival mode and purely
concentrating on the essential things.
Mark: My name is Mark
I’m 32 years old and I work in London
as an electrical engineer.
Kate’s got Hodkin’s Lymphoma.
She was diagnosed in 2014 .
I was devastated, to be honest I hadn’t heard of
Hodkin’s Lymphoma at all so I didn’t know what it was
or whether it was particularly treatable.
I remember once I got the original diagnosis
I did relatively early on phone my line manager
to explain that this had happened and I was going to need
to take some time off to come around to it
and he was amazing.
He was able to give me a few weeks to get my head around things
to start with and then when I went back to work
he allowed me to get away or catch up on work at other times
if I needed to come home for a hospital appointment
and treatment days and that sort of thing.
So still to now I’ve still not missed a consultants appointment
because of work or anything.
If you’re in a position where you can have more flexibility
and the ability to work from home then that’s, that would be amazing.
Charlotte: One of the most important ways for actually
supporting carers in the workplace
is for managers to set up good communication,
good two-way communication
so that the carer feels they can speak to them openly
and confidentially about any concerns
they might have or any changes they might need to make
to their working patterns.
Cancer is a fluctuating condition
so it’s difficult for carers to predict exactly
when they’re going to need time off work
and that’s why it’s helpful for managers to be flexible.
Claire: I realised perhaps three weeks or so before Lizzie was passing away
that there was a definite decline.
I phoned up and I just said I’m absolutely terrified
because I might lose my job now but she now needs 24/7
I can’t work anymore, I can’t have that compromise.
When I got the message back that there was
no way I would lose my job it was just
a massive, massive relief, I just needed
I needed that security and actually at that level
it also felt like some sort of personal care in a sense,
you know, that somebody cared.
Mark: Everyone I worked with I told because
it’s not something I’d want to hide.
It’s much easier for people to understand
if they understand what’s going on with you.
It’s fine to tell them but no-one really knows what to say.
There is a policy at work for flexible working and
we can look at it from a carers perspective.
It made it far easier to talk about
if I needed an afternoon off to be able to
come back for a consultant’s appointment or a medical procedure
I could talk to my boss, let him know I was going to catch up
on the work another time, or catch up on the train
or work later another night
and I knew it wasn’t going to be a problem
as long as it wasn’t particularly affecting the business.
I think I’ve been very lucky with my experience
and I’ve got no reason to want to move on
especially away from a company that treats you that well.
Charlotte: It’s important that the workplace has it’s own
dedicated carers policy
so that if someone becomes a carer, especially at short notice
they can refer to the policy and see what provision
the organisation makes for them.
So this would include things like their legal rights as a carer, but also
any special provisions made by the organisation
such as dedicated carers leave
or the different types of flexible working offered by the organisation.
Carol: Shortly after the bone marrow transplant itself
was the annual performance review.
Regrettably I was marked in the very bottom box
because it was felt that I didn’t really exhibit that
going that extra mile type of behaviour that they were looking for.
So at the very time that I was going through a real period of crisis,
the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to face in my life
I was being expected to not only achieve,
but to exceed achievements at work.
When I realised I would just have eight weeks to turn the situation around
or else lose my job, I basically had a little bit of a breakdown
and I just ran off to the GP and just said I can’t cope anymore.
Jacqui: Carers are also protected under the equality act
to ensure they are not discriminated against in the workplace.
Discrimination in the workplace can take many forms.
It can be as simple as overlooking somebody for a promotion
or it can be more obvious discrimination of individuals
excluding that person, or making derogatory comments about them
because of the situation that they’re in.
Charlotte: It’s important that line managers respect confidentiality
and privacy of the cancer carer
but with their permission it can be helpful to perhaps talk to the rest of the team
to think about how workloads can perhaps be reallocated
and also keep in communication with other departments
and managers about maybe adjusting deadlines
and schedules to accommodate the fact that someone might
need to take time off to care.
Claire: We’re at work the greater part of our lives
and hopefully we’re in a work environment where
we’ll stay there, because we’re valued and we value work.
So for what is relativity a short space of time
but the most horrendous situation generally that people can go through.
Don’t treat them with kid gloves
treat them with the respect of the strength that they have
and the fact that they’ve worked for you
and they’ve given everything to you as well.
Let them know exactly what the policies are
but also let them know you’re prepared to be flexible
and let that person feel that they’re empowered to take responsibility
for dealing with something important to them at that time in life.
Mark: From my perspective the flexibility side of things is
the most important thing you can give to anyone.
The ability to catch up where possible
and obviously it’s not going to be possible with every company,
but where you can give the flexibility to attend medical appointments,
treatments and that sort of thing, it’s really helpful.
It has been really helpful for me
and it has also been really helpful for Kate.
Moving forward I might look at doing more formal flexible working
to make it easier to be at hospital appointments,
to be able to take Kate to and from hospital
when she’s having her treatment now and things.