What can we learn from the RNLI and Mountain Rescue about how to put carers on the map?

By Sue Jackson

My husband used to do a lot of walking and scrambling in the mountains. He managed to get back into it after he had his head injury fifteen years ago, but since his more recent stroke six years ago, no matter how much rehab he’s done, he’s still not been able to venture up any significant hills. We used to have an annual trip to our home county of Yorkshire every year, plus a couple of long weekend trips to places where my husband could work on collecting Nuttalls (mountains over 2,000 feet). For a long time after the stroke, he coped with the loss of his beloved mountains by avoiding them — he wouldn’t go anywhere that had mountains that he would once have been able to climb, and he avoided watching programmes about them on the television. Then, about 18-months ago, we watched A Year on Blencathra on TV, and he clearly enjoyed telling me about his glory days on the mountains. Now we often watch programmes of people out walking in the hills and we’ve discovered a whole series of programmes about people getting into difficulties and needing to be rescued.

We were watching Mountain Rescue one evening when I noticed that the narrator kept mentioning that the people who provide the service are volunteers. Not only that, but I saw these volunteers working side by side with people from the emergency services who treat them with respect. Interested, I watched Saving Lives at Sea, to find the same thing happening — the narrator emphasising how the people from the RNLI who go out in all weathers are volunteers, and again, I saw them working side by side with emergency services who treat them with respect. Which got me thinking. Why is it not like that for carers?