Campaign to support unpaid carers in Medway
Plus Learning to be Irish, new Mess Room exhibition at Rochester Cathedral, the Penrose Web, events this week, and more
A new campaign from the Medway Foodbank seeks to highlight the plight of unpaid carers, with a study suggesting one in seven carers face poverty. We’ve been talking to those involved in the campaign to learn more. Further down, we hear about Maria McCarthy’s new book, Learning to be Irish, a new exhibition by Mess Room artists at Rochester Cathedral, look at upcoming Kent events, and lots more.
Campaign to support unpaid carers in Medway
Medway Foodbank and Carers First have an ongoing campaign highlighting poverty amongst unpaid carers. We caught up with Mike Evans, campaign manager at Medway Foodbank, to learn about the Carer Poverty Project…
Food banks are places where those without the financial resources to buy their own food are able to access food parcels, providing nutritionally balanced meals, which should last for three days. The Medway Foodbank has existed for more than a decade and has nine food bank centres around Medway.
Medway Foodbank is partially funded by the Trussell Trust, alongside significant food donations from the public, via Tesco and Asda stores in Medway. In 2019, they provided 7,500 food parcels. In 2024, that had risen to over 15,000 parcels. The slightly positive news is that the figures for the first half of this year show that the number is plateauing, if not declining.
Mike was shocked to discover the number of unpaid carers who are using the food bank. “The Carers Trust did a study, and they discovered that one in seven unpaid carers in the UK have used a food bank and one million carers are currently living in poverty.” The campaign is to reduce the number of carers who need to use food banks. “Trussell currently have a vision of a society without the need for food banks.”
“We're not going to take away support from people.” says Mike reassuringly, “but we don't want to be here.” Medway Foodbank, like many, is concerned about the economic factors driving food bank use and “we want to do something about that.” Asked by the Trussell Trust to identify one area where they see a great need, they have decided to focus on unpaid carers.
One might ask how we can have unpaid carers in a country with a minimum wage. Unpaid carer is the term for those people who are not paid professional care workers, but are the primary carer for a friend, partner or family member who needs full-time care. They provide this care, and whilst they may receive Carer’s Allowance, they are not paid much. It is not salaried, because we continue to delay resolving this issue as a country.
“The levels of poverty are appalling amongst unpaid carers,” notes Mike. A study by the Centre for Care showed that if the work of unpaid carers was done by the NHS or social services, the cost to the government would be over £180bn per annum. “If the people who are being looked after by unpaid carers didn't have those kind souls looking after them, then their care would fall upon the NHS and local government.” According to the Centre for Care, that's allowing £25 per hour for looking after someone and providing the care they need. “Often that's quite complicated. There are manual hoists involved, changing stomas, changing catheters, getting people dressed who can't dress themselves, providing personal care. That's not an easy thing to do.”
Medway Foodbank are working with Medway Council, “who have engaged very constructively with us. They have agreed with us that there should be a Medway Council charter for carers. There's a steering group being set up to create that which I've been invited onto.” Mike is also hoping that Medway Council might set up a carer’s hub at the Pentagon Centre so that “carers are able to access all the information in one physical space and there might also be social activities.”
Deputy Leader of Medway Council, Teresa Murray, portfolio holder for adult social care told us:
“No one in this day and age should be reliant on the work of food banks, least of all the thousands of carers who devote their time to looking after friends and family members around Medway. I want to recognise and appreciate the Trussell Medway Foodbank for their joint work with Carers First on the Carer Poverty Project campaign, which is aiming to reduce the number of unpaid carers living in poverty. I would urge all carers to make a visit to their website. More still needs to be done to support our carers. Medway Council recognises the huge contribution they make to our community, and we will continue to provide support and guidance to help them carry on their much-valued work. Our Adult Social Care team are also currently carrying out a review of what help is available for carers, and we hope this too will lead to better support for carers and their families. Funding for carers is determined by central government, and we will continue to work with our local MPs to ensure that any changes to funding recognise the financial pressures carers experience and results in improvements.”
Medway Foodbank are campaigning for an increase in Carer’s Allowance and for more funding for Adult Social Care. At a local level, they are asking Medway Council to introduce a Carer’s Card with financial discounts for carers, and to provide specialist financial advice for carers, similar to the scheme MacMillan operate at Medway Council for cancer patients. “We've made good progress,” says Mike. “Back in April, we had an advertising campaign about the carers campaign, and we've built quite a good campaign team.”
As part of the campaign, Mike is looking for more personal stories of “unpaid carers who have used a food bank and are willing to talk to the media about their experiences of using a food bank and what they'd like to see change” to help get the message out and provide what is referred to as ‘human interest’ behind the harsh reality.
Medway Foodbank is being supported in their campaign by Rochester and Strood MP, Lauren Edwards. She told us that:
"It’s a real worry that anyone has to rely on a food bank, especially carers, who do such vital work for families and within our communities. I recently visited Medway Foodbank, and we discussed our shared concerns about the Government’s proposed changes to PIP eligibility and the impact this would have on passported benefits like Carer’s Allowance. It’s one of the reasons I opposed Government legislation until the PIP eligibility changes were removed. I’m pleased the Government listened, and more positive changes in the legislation, such as the above-inflation increase to Universal Credit, will go forward, while no changes to PIP will take place until a full review is conducted, with proper input from disabled people and carers.”
“We've had a very constructive meeting with Lauren Edwards,” said Mike, “who agrees with us that Carer’s Allowance is far too low. There are many issues about Carer’s Allowance which we're unhappy about. The fact that it stops at state pension age, the fact that you're only able to earn £196 per week, and if you go over that, you then lose your Carer’s Allowance.” There were significant failures at the DWP, which resulted in thousands of carers who had inadvertently worked longer than they're allowed to, being told they were no longer allowed Carer’s Allowance. “If you earn one pound more than the threshold, you lose your entire Carer’s Allowance, which is now £83.30 a week.” To earn that Carer’s Allowance, you must do 35 hours’ worth of care. “This is one of the other scandals of Carer’s Allowance,” as that means the amount given works out at £2.38 per hour of care.
If you are a Medway resident who provides unpaid care and is willing to discuss it, Mike at Medway Foodbank would like to hear from you. He is looking for Medway residents to talk to ITV Meridan News, and he is looking for Rochester and Strood constituents to provide evidence for Lauren Edwards’ work in Westminster.
Maria McCarthy learns to be Irish
Medway writer and poet Maria McCarthy is releasing her fifth book, Learning to be Irish, her most personal book yet. Ahead of the launch, we spoke to her to find out more…
I start by asking what Learning to be Irish is about. “It's about learning to be Irish,” Maria tells me. She was born into a family of Irish migrants in Epsom, Surrey, and lived through the anti-Irish feeling of the 70s when the IRA were bombing mainland England. “At some stage, I made an internalised decision to stop being Irish.”
Maria was particularly affected by a comment by a physics teacher after the Guildford pub bombings. “’I see your lot have been at it again,’ in front of the whole class.” Maria decided that it was safer to pretend that she was English and not engage in the second-generation Irish life. “I'd taken part in going to Irish dances, going to the Gaelic games at Wembley. I still socialised with family, but I denied being Irish.”
This was until she reclaimed it in her 30s. The book is about that journey of discovery and “trying to reclaim my identity and trying to find out about family history.” This was in an environment where people didn't really talk about things, what Maria refers to as “home truths, half truths, and white lies.” Despite finishing the book, Maria is still discovering things about her family.
The book isn’t solely a non-fiction book. “It's a hybrid book. A mixture of memoir, poetry and short fiction,” from where Maria has been ruminating on the topic for 20 years in different forms. It was whilst Maria was studying for an MA in Creative Writing, that she wrote two linked stories that were “about an Irish family living in England, an Irish woman and her daughters, based on my own experience, and that's where it all began.”
It was a writer friend, John O'Donoghue, another second-generation Irish writer, who suggested that Maria put her various pieces together “in what he then called ‘the Portable McCarthy,’ which was the working title of the book.” For Maria, the memoir pieces were very difficult. “It is a deeply personal book, and I do have thoughts, that when I read at the launch, about how I will protect myself from sharing too personal stuff in those readings.” Still, Maria ends on a more uplifting note about her identity. “Being Irish is a lot more positive now, I've got an Irish passport, and everyone wants an Irish passport now, don't they?”
The Learning to be Irish book launch is on Saturday 19 July at 1pm in the Creation Space at Sun Pier House. Maria is also selling copies of the book via her website.
New community exhibition at Rochester Cathedral
The Mess Room is hosting an exhibition with the Kent Association for the Blind at Rochester Cathedral. We caught up with Artistic Director Wendy Daws to find out more…
Seven groups are exhibiting, each working with a different lead artist, with the work inspired by the Shorts Brothers’ Floatplane, which arrives at the cathedral in August. The Gravesend group, working with Tina Ryan, a printmaker, have created new prints: They've used foam and other materials to create stamps, and then they reflect elements of the plane. Tina made two propellers out of wet strength tissue paper, to put the group's artwork onto the propellers and then it's lit from the inside. There's also a work in progress book with all their prints.
Tony, one of the visually impaired artists, has made a separate piece of art, working with watercolour paper and black cutouts of Spitfires. The planes have been fixed onto the watercolour, and pigment has just been blasted all around it, giving the effect that it bleeds into the paper. Catriona Faulkner has worked with one of the Medway groups, and everyone has been sewing. They have made a spectacular tactile tapestry of the floatplane. This has included people with no sight who have been sewing. One gentleman, who had never sewn before, intends to repair a cushion because he feels he can do that now.
Hannah Whitaker worked with the Pier Arts Group, and they homed in on the pig, which was taken up in 1909 for a flight in a barrel wearing goggles. This is a real thing. Fittingly, the work is called ‘Pigs might fly.’ There is now a pigmobile floating above the Rochester Cathedral model they have in the crypt. Shona van Aswegen has, with her group, made 308 paper planes which have been installed into window insets in the crypt. A gentleman from Canterbury has made Mercury's Ankle as another standalone piece.
Wendy worked with the Bromley, Canterbury and Tunbridge Wells groups to make a tactile blueprint of technical drawings. They visited Medway Archives to look at the technical drawings there, photocopied or printed them, traced them, and then everybody was given a small segment which they then reproduced in large scale on swell paper. Swell paper is a special paper that, when you use a black pen, is fed through a machine, which raises the line. This was then given a blue wash to mimic a blueprint, leaving a remarkable effect.
The exhibit is part of Medway Open Studios and is available to visit for free until 31 August. There are occasional closures, so check the cathedral website to ensure it is open before visiting.
Review: The Least of Our Concerns by The Penrose Web
by Stephen Morris
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt of a review by our music columnist Stephen Morris. The full version will be available for our paid supporters in the future, alongside additional reviews of The Spike Direction Effect and the Guy Hamper Trio.
This is a record about wars within one’s own mind, of regrets over the past and frustration with the slipping away of time, of a desire to become better while the world gets worse.
The record opens with a deceptive, light of touch sounding tune full of whimsy and word play (“it’s never too late to be out of date”). But amidst all of this, ‘Never Too Soon’, with its jangly light psychedelic sound, sets the scene for much of what is to follow. This is a song, just like the album it introduces, all about an unwinnable battle with time. Nowhere do Crockford and Button put it better than on the line “it’s autumn but it feels just like spring.”
The battle with time re-emerges on the Aladdin Sane-ish ‘Melting,’ in which the problem is that time is just passing too slowly. Against a swaggering, charged backdrop, we hear the complaint that “time wants to show what she can put you through.”
Meanwhile, ‘Mr Chance,’ which could have just as easily come from the pens of Groovy Uncle or The Len Price 3, offers a thumbnail sketch of someone who lets opportunity pass him by out of fear. Or, as The Penrose Web more eloquently put it, “Keeping his options open, he says, but his shoes are nailed to the floor.”
The Least of Our Concerns is an excellent addition to Messrs Crockford and Button’s extensive catalogues, covering a broad range of styles while remaining cohesively and gloriously The Penrose Web. Listen once and you’ll be impressed. Listen twice and you’ll love it.
The Least of Our Concerns by The Penrose Web is available from Bandcamp
If you would like to find out more about music in Medway, Stephen Morris is hosting Songs in the Key of… Live on 26 July at Medway Little Theatre, where he will be talking to Glenn Prangnell, Rachel Lowrie and Lupen Crook about their lives in music. The evening will include music from Rachel’s band, South Shore, and Lupen Crook.
Events this week
🍒 Sat 12 Jul - Friends of the Vines Cherry Picnic // Bring a picnic, enjoy local cherries and various activities to raise money for charity. The Vines, Rochester. Free.
🎺 Sat 12 Jul - The Medway Band + Gillingham and Rainham Rock Choir // Kent’s finest brass band in concert. Brompton Academy, Gillingham. Tickets £10.
🎤 Wed 16 Jul - Rhod Gilbert & The Giant Grapefruit // New dark and personal show from the Welsh comedian. Central Theatre, Chatham. Tickets £35.
🗣️ Thu 17 Jul - Full Medway Council meeting // Politicians bicker with each other over how to get things done. St George’s Centre, Chatham. Free.
🏃 Fri 18 Jul - Medway Mile // Get unreasonably sweaty running around Gillingham with thousands of other people. Medway Park, Gillingham. Free.
🔍 Fri 18 Jul - Solve Along Murder She Wrote // Interactive show where you get to help Jessica Fletcher solve a classic murder mystery. St Margaret’s Church, Rainham. Tickets £20.
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