An innovative centre is offering relaxation therapies at a reduced rate for family carers and the people they care for. MICHELLE MCDONAGHreports
RESEARCH UNDERTAKEN by Care Alliance Ireland last year found that family carers are at a high risk of experiencing isolation, stress and depression. They also report a considerably lower quality of life and poorer health compared with the non-carer population.
These findings came as no surprise to Catherine Patience, Anita Hayes and Tonia Kusters, all full-time family carers with an interest in alternative therapies, who have come together to set up the Ciúnas Community Centre for Complementary Health in east Clare.
The three women know only too well that family carers and the people they care for are very vulnerable, particularly in rural areas and the levels of stress they experience are increasingly leading to physical and mental health problems.
Centre manager Fran Gianquinto explains that the centre’s client group, which includes family carers, the elderly and the disabled, experience higher levels of physical and mental stress than the rest of the population.
“Indeed, local and national evidence and the experience of the founding therapists strongly indicates that there are many families in Co Clare and elsewhere in Ireland who are struggling in crisis, socially isolated, disadvantaged and with little external support simply because they are full-time carers of family members who may be elderly and/or disabled,” says Gianquinto.
Hayes and her husband are the sole carers of an elderly, disabled and blind mother. Hayes is also a registered cranio sacral therapist and a trained hospice nurse and in 1991, she founded the Irish Seedsavers’ Association which is now one of the most prominent environmental charities in Ireland.
Patience has been a full-time carer for her son, Eoghan, for the past 13 years. Born with Down syndrome and later diagnosed with autism, Eoghan has been through major heart surgery twice and he has never walked. Patience and her husband have studied and practised Reiki for the past 12 years, which they have found helpful and empowering.
Kusters is a carer of a 19-year-old daughter with special needs. She is trained as a teacher, special needs teacher and accredited therapist in Reiki and Bach remedies.
It was when Hayes, Patience and Toni started seeing one another for treatments that they began to chat casually about the fact that they felt therapies were overpriced and, as a result, difficult for carers to access.
They came up with the idea of fundraising to set up a dedicated centre offering therapies at reduced rates to carers and their families, making them more accessible and helping to reduce tension in the whole family and make everybody’s lives better as a result.
Patience comments: “While they can be thin on the ground, there are often therapies available for people with disability, such as physiotherapy, and we felt there was a need in Ireland for a service that would support the carer and the whole family, rather than focusing only on the disabled person.
“While the Carers’ Association and Caring for Carers provide respite weekends and hold support meetings in various centres around the country, as far as we know, there’s nothing else like Ciúnas in Ireland providing hands-on stress relief type support to carers.”
In 2008, the founders visited the Disability Foundation UK, which was set up by one disabled woman and her daughter eight years ago and now has 200 clients a week, along with a free national information service.
The purpose-built Ciúnas centre on the outskirts of the village of Feakle in east Clare will open its doors next Tuesday. It offers a wide range of stress- relieving complementary therapies such as skilled counselling, massage, aromatherapy, art and music therapy, reflexology as well as befriending.
“Ciúnas will provide a welcoming and confidential space where family carers and their charges can express difficult emotions such as frustration, self-doubt, depression and loneliness. The centre aims to be a refuge where carers and those in their care can feel safe to be heard,” explains Gianquinto.
She says the community based, non-profit organisation is committed to providing short-, medium- and long-term complementary care to carers and those they care for at a subsidised cost. Fourteen therapists have come on board already to work on a sessional, on-demand basis at reduced rates, making the therapies more affordable for clients.
Patience wasn’t surprised when she saw the results of studies on levels of depression in carers while she and her Ciúnas co-founders were preparing their business plan.
“It’s so isolating out there on our own. Until you’ve been a carer, you can’t know what it’s like to be on call 24 hours a day, the sheer exhaustion of it,” she says.
While Patience says her family are “in the lucky position” of getting a full night’s sleep now, it was not always like this.
“I know there are many families out there like we were, zombies dragging themselves through the days, up in the night and all day. Being a family carer is not an eight-hour shift, the carer is on duty 24 hours. It’s very hard to get a break from it. Often a carer is identified as one person, usually the mother in a family, but when there is a severely disabled or very elderly person being cared for, it affects the whole family,” she remarks.
The whole concept behind the Ciúnas centre, she explains, is to support family carers like herself, Hayes and Kusters, and to try to help lift some of the stress that is part of their daily lives. They are hoping to do a small amount of work in the centre themselves, but their input will be limited due to their caring commitments.
“Funding is always a challenge, especially in the current climate, but the therapists are all prepared to work on a contract basis for a lower rate so that the client pays a much reduced rate than they would on the high street,” says Patience.
The centre has benefited from a one-off grant from the JP McManus Foundation and has been given approval for an equipment grant from the Leader scheme. They are going through the channels of applying for official funding and once the service is successfully up and running, they hope to make an application to the HSE.
In the meantime, the Ciúnas centre will be organising local fundraising events and relying on donations. To contact the centre, tel 061-924837.
- Donations can be made to the Support for Caring Communities bank account, Bank of Ireland, sort code 904413, a/c no 72502886
