Casey's story

My name is Casey, I am 18 and live in Queensland. One unique thing about me is that I have lots of experience with technology.

I have been caring for my mother for 13 years. My mother requires care because she has Parkinson's disease and is unable to perform most functions. I have to care for my mother because she is my family and I care about her. However, I also have to focus on school studies in order to pass. Just like me I’d imagine other young carers would also have to spend a lot of time caring for their family and friends.

A good day caring for my mother is when she is not feeling as sick as usual and not requiring much assistance. While a bad day caring for my mother is when she is feeling worse than usual and needing a lot more help.

Being away from my mother makes me feel extremely anxious due to the thought that if something bad were to happen to her, I would not be around to help her.

Being a carer has changed my life because spending a lot of my time helping out my mother meant not much time to build friendships. Because of my caring role I am unable to spend as much time with friends or doing my own thing.

Being a carer has taught me that when the going gets tough, all you can really do is keep going. I would cope better with my caring role if I could take a little bit of time off every now and then. My piece of advice to my fellow young carers is to never give up, you are doing a truly amazing thing for the people you are caring for.