Financial hardships: family members balancing work and care.
In the Young Families Project we speak to parents and siblings of children with intellectual disabilities about their lives. Our findings are presented in a series of essays.
This is part 3.
In this third essay (PDF) we focus on the financial hardships family members face who are balancing work and care.
Our goal is to show how families of children with intellectual disabilities struggle financially, the sacrifices they have to make and how difficult it is to balance work and care.
“They don’t allow you to just live a ‘normal life’: working, benefiting from all those years of studying, building a career, living your life. Instead, they tell you ‘no, you don’t get to do that, but we will give you a bit of money.’ So, yes, they give you some benefits, but it doesn’t make any sense. This is not how it’s supposed to be.”
Read the full essay here: The financial situation of the whole family is affected – Financial hardships: family members balancing work and care (PDF)
Young Families Project
- Introduction: What parents and siblings of children with intellectual disabilities face every day.
- If you don’t know how to navigate the system then you are lost and your child is too.
- Financial hardships in the family, and the difficulty of balancing work and care.
- Fighting for a good education for their loved one with an intellectual disability, and balancing school and care.
- Struggling with mental health and wellbeing and neglecting their own needs.