how desperate unpaid carers really are...

Carers UK recently published research into how many unpaid carers are in poverty (spoiler: being a carer means you're x2 as likely to be in poverty than if you're not).

Despite being lauded by government and other agencies in recognition of the roughly £160 BILLION that we save the government EACH YEAR, there's still plenty of disgruntlement amongst us for the lack or recognition and support we receive in turn - for example: for those eligible to qualify to be able to apply for carers allowance (plot twist: despite having sole unpaid caring responsibilities for several family members in my immediate household, I'm only eligible to receive £6 each week), this only offers about £2 per hour that we can receive in recognition of the time we spend caring, which prevents for from being 'economically active' otherwise: earning money to support ourselves as others can. For comparison, the legal minimum wage we would have to be paid for any job, however menial, starts at £6.40 per hour.

The report by Carers UK digs into this topic in painful and shocking detail. And while others have done far better jobs that I in looking at the wider dimensions of how carers suffer inescapable poverty because of the nature of the role: https://numbereighteeninthecorner.blog/2024/09/19/carer-servitude/, - I'm focussing here on what this latest research tells us about how being an unpaid carer affects those of us who are also self-employed. 

Now, before we get into Carers UK's research, to 'set the scene' here, self-employment in general is:

• one of the worst things you can do for your mental well-being; 
• likely to mean you earn less for doing the same job than if you were salaried;
• worse than being employed for your long-term health.

And yet roughly 500,000 of us who are unpaid carers are choosing this way of working on top of being a carer, which in itself is recognised as being:

• highly stressful;
• leaves us socially isolated;
• bad for our mental well-being;
• roughly, up to £20,000 worse off EACH YEAR. 

So lets do the reveal: unpaid carers who are also self-employed are x2 more likely to be in poverty than their employed counterparts, who also have caring responsibilities (and to 'rub salt in the wound', we don't get the same legal recognition or protection as they do...) 

So why are so many of us pursuing this apparent nonsense of pushing ourselves even further 'over the edge' by 'doing' self-employment alongside our caring role, when all the evidence above says it's the worst thing anyone could do to themselves?

As Carers UK research highlights, nearly half of people who were salaried before becoming carers are forced to give up their jobs, because they find the two roles aren't compatible. 

The current rules on carers allowances (assuming you're eligible to be able to be apply for it, then and lucky enough to get it) means that you can't earn more than £151 a week. Combined with the max carers allowance of £81.90, this would mean you have a maximum income potential of roughly £12,000 a year to live (covering housing, food, utilities, clothing, etc). That's less than half of what's recognised as a person needing to earn in order to have a minimum acceptable standard of living. This means that many carers simply can't afford to apply for/live on carers allowance, and as previously highlighted, quite a lot of demands and requirements of being an employee are incompatible with being a carer.

Which means that short of picking the winning numbers on the lottery, or robbing a bank, the only other choice is either living in deep poverty or doing self-employment (although as the research shows, doing self-employment is no guarantee you won't escape the poverty trap).

And I've also heard of some of my contemporaries in this space who've openly shared that taking on this most stressful of all employments was the best way they could find to help them find a counter-balance to the stresses and responsibilities of being a carer. Which takes us back to the earlier point of how tough being a carer is - but how tough must it be, for the most stressful of all employments to be seen as a type of respite from it?  

So for anyone out there who's also a carer as well as being self-employed: I hope you take some comfort from this post, in it offering you a recognition of how tough life really is for you. And for anyone who isn't: I hope you can use some of the feelings that this post has (hopefully) stirred up in you to act in support for carers of all types. 

how better support for carers could instantly see growth in 20% of businesses across the economy

I've written in the past about how unpaid carers are usually invisible and overlooked, and that for those of us who are also self-employed, we're even more so, because we're not even recognised in law (unlike our counterparts who may be in salaried employment, and despite there being an equal likelihood that if you are able to work while also an unpaid carer, you'll be doing it in this way).

I've also shared the statistics about how this lack of support for those of us who are (trying to) trade and maintain caring roles, means that 'UK plc' is at least £5billion a year worse off than it might otherwise be.

But I've recently also started to have conversations with some different local business support bodies', and start-up programme, managers who are beginning to recognise that they perhaps aren't doing anything/enough to consider the design of their offers and encouragements with regards to the circumstances and realities of people with caring responsibilities.

This came to the fore for me recently, as part of an event organised by the Collective Leadership Group, who'd invited me to showcase some of my research and efforts around the realities of being an unpaid carers and an entrepreneur.

As part of this event, Hatch Enterprise shared the findings of a recent study that they'd undertaken into the experiences and barriers people face in relation to the concept and idea of entrepreneurship. One of their question prompts from their surveys in this was about barriers entrepreneurs were experiencing that were hindering and limiting the success of their respective ventures. As well as questions around gender, geography, ethnicity, and disability (which remain depressingly entrenched), their survey also asked about caring responsibilities:

For me, this is an exciting chart, because it highlights and challenges:

1) the extent to which all existing businesses are being constrained, because of a lack of relevant and appropriately designed support available to them by business support providers and caring bodies;

2) that there's near parity in how men and women are affected - caring is usually associated with women, but as I've been seeing over the last few years, there's far more men doing it than might be otherwise expected.

The wider session was also encouraging, as as I shared my notes and ideas based on the research and evidences I'm identifying around this topic, people agreed that there's a lot of 'blindness' to not only how carers are thought about (or not) when programmes and projects to support different groups of people and communities and being designed and run; but also to the very limited and outdated stereotypes about the scope and range of understanding that most people have in relation to what caring roles can look like and involve, and who has them.

 

too many badges for my own good?

Anyone who's seen the opening page of my impact report this year, will have been overwhelmed by the number of logos of bodies that I'm a signatory to/accredited by (and this doesn't include the even longer list of professional memberships I have!).

There's a story behind each one as to why I specifically made the effort to be able to show it off next to my name (in time, cost, and energy) - but none of which are to do with it helping me to win work (my feedback from clients is that they've never been interested in this type of thing when it comes to deciding who to commission to support them).

And I'm wondering if there's therefore a parallel here with the various accreditations, honours, and recognitions that I have in the form of the tins of 'alphabet soup' that I can arrange either side of my name - they've similarly never impacted on the work I've won, and if anything, most of the groups, communities, and people I work with find them a turn-off...

But I'm proud of these recognitions from different bodies as to how I conduct my business, and the impacts it creates (otherwise they wouldn't have accepted my applications to them), so don't want to completely hide them away... which leaves me wondering what the right balance is in shouting about them: both for the value of what they represented, and that they've endorsed me as being 'alright' by their standards.

If you're curious about any of these 'badges', etc, see below for the links to each: 

Organisation of Responsible Business

Charter for Inclusive Entrepreneurship

Prompt Payment Code

Good Business Charter

Fair Tax pledge

Armed Forces Covenant

Co-operativesUK

Social Value UK

Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE)

Voluntary Sector Studies Network (VSSN)

UK Society for Co-operative Studies

Locality

Better Business Network (BBN)

Federation of Small Businesses (FSB)

Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, manufactures, and commerce (RSA)

Shakespeare, Einstein, and now me - how imposter syndrome has been understood and managed through the centuries

After I accidentally wrote and self-published my book about imposter syndrome, I found that people started to want to invite me to guest on their podcasts to talk about it - and rather than see this as an opportunity for some additional promo (although that never hurts, right?), I saw it as an opportunity to reflect on my research and ideas afresh, from new critical perspectives.

Recently, this saw me conversing with fellow RSA Fellow Dr Nia Thomas, on her Knowing Self, Knowing Others series - you can 'listen again' to the whole episode here: 

https://podcast.knowingselfknowingothers.co.uk/2031015/15446370-73-unraveling-impostor-syndrome-self-doubt-and-personal-growth-with-adrian-ashton

And she's also taken out some snippets about how to rob banks, the risks of lemon juice, etc that came up during our conversation on her TikTok channel here:

https://www.tiktok.com/@knowingselfknowingothers 

But for those who would rather have the main headlines from it - my listening back highlighted how 'imposter syndrome':

• can act as a form of protection - both for ourselves, and others;
• is sometimes weaponised against us by others for their own agendas and aims;
• has emerged as a social construct, and as such can usually be more limiting than helpful;
• is linked to a wider conspiracy theories;
• and is a truth illusion: not only with reference to its own origin story, but also in how this 'illusion' is subsequently being perpetuated...

I also found myself referencing Shakespeare (for his guidance on how we balance our understanding of our own self, with not becoming paralysed with what we start to recognise and realise), and Einstein (for how he managed his own feelings of imposterism) - which shows that these feelings aren't new and were otherwise waiting to be discovered by Clance and Innes in their 1970s paper, but that we've perhaps simply started to get better at having the vocabulary to talk about more, and to recognise how they interconnect with our wider selves and others.

If you're interested to see how Nia's own reflections on our conversation pulled out different themes and prompts, you can check out her blog post on it here: 

https://knowingselfknowingothers.substack.com/p/top-takeaways-tuesday-unraveling 

I also talked about why it is I sometimes feel uncomfortable walking into a room full of women, but you'll have to listen to the podcast for the answer to that tease...

you'll never look at a shopping trolley in the same way again...

I was recently invited to guest on the ValuesJam podcast, to reflect on the value of Generosity (which wasn't chosen me, or the series' host, but rather by the universe, after I chose the number '42' - if you want to know more about that tangent, you'll have to listed to the episode!).

As a quick reference point, 'values' are those things that are most important to us in informing how we try and act, view the world and others, define ourselves by, and how we prioritise our decisions.  

The show takes the format of using the ValuesJam card deck, to explore and understand how different values manifest, impact, and can be harnessed to create better understanding between us all (as a group of people trying to share the same planet).

So, after drawing the Generosity card, we started to share stories around the card's prompts. 

You can get the full episode here:

https://youtu.be/MwHkwP0_3Z0?si=lFfRmZ78HmfNI4Bk

But as a brief synopsis of what I took from listening back to it, the themes that we seemed to keep returning to through the discussion were:

• how negative motivations can create public good through the lens of values;
• how talking about values can resurface hidden and lost memories;
• the need for crazies if we're to see movements for change not only start, but also 'take'*;
• how we usually recognise a value more, the more we practice it.

And naturally, my props were never far from appearing on camera - this time, it was the turn of a rubber duck, safety googles, and a trumpet that each seemed a natural artefact to highlight an idea or argument we found ourselves making and exploring...

Overall, we agreed that being generous is a risky business for people to be, and if you listen to the full episode, you may never look at shopping trolleys in the same way again, after we found ourselves constantly returning to them and the influence they create on other people's behaviour as well as our own...

* https://youtu.be/fW8amMCVAJQ 

how to find out how much people really respect you...

I've blogged in the past about how difficult it can be to take 'time off' as a sole trader/freelancer - something that various studies also highlight:

• 1 in 4 of us aren't able to take any holiday at all, and of those of us that are able to, about half have to take work with them;
• and this isn't because we're all greedily trying to cash in, or we're workaholics, but because unlike our counterparts in salaried employment, we're not entitled to the nearly 6 weeks paid time off that they can claim for holidays.  If we take time off, we get no pay;
• and all of this is further compounded by my also being one of the nearly 500,000 self-employed/sole traders who are also unpaid carers, and so already earning less money than those that aren't...

So it was with mixed emotions that I prepared to be away for a week with my wife recently - roving around caves, forests, and fields in Devon and Cornwall. And as this has been the first time we've been able to take a holiday together for about 5 years, was 'quite important'. 

In recognising this, I made effort to contact various clients, project managers, associates, etc in advance, to alert them to my being away - partly to help manage expectations, and also to try and best protect this time away.

Most people I contacted acknowledged and wished us both a restful and enjoyable time. A mark of the respect and strength of relationship I'd built with them. Or so I thought...

While I was away, I had to respond to no less than 13 arising issues, all from different bodies, people, and groups whom I'd already informed of my being 'out of office'*. These ranged from local groups, to collaborators with whom I'm working on joint projects with, to infrastructure and national sector bodies.

And none of these messages referenced the senders' awareness that I was taking a holiday at the time they were sending them, nor that they were able/happy to wait until my return - in fact, nearly all needed responses urgently (so a good job that I was able to wander around early in the mornings before my wife rose for our adventures of the day, to find signals for my phone and quickly send acknowledgements, replies, and clarifications to nearly all of them).

Now, the above could be read as an encouragement that I'm fortunate to have these relationships and work at all, but it's also been said that a mark of respect is how far people will act in ways you ask them to - and in light of the above, I can't help but start to wonder how far my experience is illustrative of either people not being respectful of me, or it's a wider issue about freelancers and sole traders in general not being respected?

My hope in sharing this 'rant' isn't to shame any of the above (after all, there are always at least 5 sides to every story, and we'll never be aware of most of them), but to try and open up opportunities for conversations with others to test the above question: is it easier to have your holiday protected and uninterrupted if you're employed (and so have legal rights and protections for your time off), or are freelancers and consultants not thought of as being equally valued in how they're treated by clients in comparison with how said clients would treat their employed staff for the same circumstance (taking holiday)?

If it's the former, then it's another sign of how unjust the law is in treating the self-employed as a lower class of people in not recognising or affording them the same protections and rights as people in other forms of employment are entitled to. And subsequently, the damage this is doing to the 4.3 million of us in the UK who work in this way.

* Yes, dear reader, I could have simply ignored them all until I got back to civilisation - but to do so, would have meant a higher level of stress on my return when I opened the inbox to find torrents of conversation threads marked urgent and whose deadlines had already passed and therefore my needing to get involved in dealing with the unexpected 'fallout' from these (and which would have further compounded our coming home to find the bathroom leaking into the hallway...) - thus negating all of the benefits of taking time away.

Links - 

https://www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge/article/holiday-when-self-employed-get-away-with-getting-away 

https://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/knowledge/articles/2023/05/can-i-get-self-employed-holiday-pay/ 

https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2023/06/being-all-things-to-all-people.html 

blending running a business with being a carer

Earlier this year, I found myself back in the Atomicon-verse (for those that don't know, it involves oversized pink pineapples, lots of freelancers getting giddy, and a strict 'no selling' rule). 

Most people involved in it seem to focus on the main day speakers, and the chance to hang out with people they normally only get to share a zoom screen with. But I've always found that the most encouraging, powerful, and useful part of it for me are the 'roundtables': hour-long on-line spaces in the weeks running up to it, hosted by people coming to the event, to share, reflect, and explore a range of self-chosen topics.

Last year, I was fortunate to be invited to lead one of these round tables, on the topic of being an unpaid carer and small business owner (see the write up from that here) - and this year, the ever upbeat Liz & Mike Cole were holding a space on how to approach 'blending' these 2 identities.

It saw a small group of us convene on screen at the appointed time, to initially offer mutual encouragement through each sharing a (very) small part of our story in how we'd come to gain our caring roles, after we'd already established and were running a business; and some of our struggles in reconciling often competing demands on us this leads to.

This also highlighted just how diverse caring roles can be:

- being a parent to young children

- being a foster carer

- being single parent, following the loss of a spouse

- having neurodivergent children (both young - of school age, and older - in their 20s)

- nursing a spouse through significant illness

- having elderly parents who struggle to live independently 

But we didn't focus on how we supported ourselves in these roles (as happened in last years' round table); our conversations instead explored how we can be more open about having a caring role, with our clients. 

This is because all of us identified to some extent with the concern that as freelancers and small businesses, clients buy us in to fix their problems - if they learn we also have caring responsibilities, which may mean we have to delay or defer working on their project, then they're more likely to pass us over for the commission. 

Several options and ideas emerged through these reflections together, and I've summarised them below, in hopes that they may be of encouragement and support to other unpaid carers in similar circumstances to us:

1) mapping the skills we've developed as unpaid carers, against the offers we can present to clients, to highlight how these responsibilities can offer us additional 'superpowers' in what we can offer them in turn;

2) highlighting the value and impact we've delivered to other clients whilst also having caring responsibilities, to challenge prejudice and bias on their part (however unconscious it might otherwise be);

3) pro-actively offer clarifications about our working practices to manage expectations, as part of our terms and conditions, as a means of 'positive disclosure';

4) referencing external research to validate the assertions we're making about all of the above with regards to our ability to deliver proposed projects.*

This isn't the first time that I've invested time in considering and exploring how to be more open with the world and clients about what it means for me to be an unpaid carer, and how this affects my working life - I had the opportunity to raise the question at an 'expert hot seat' session last year. However, in that instance, I felt rather disappointed with the response from the 'global experts' (who didn't have experience of caring roles themselves). Their suggestion was simply "Tell the client at some point, but don't make it a 'first date conversation' topic. If the client doesn't understand and isn't supportive, then you probably wouldn't want to work with them anyway". But that somehow misses the point of recognising that about 80% of the self-employed are already in poverty (before we add in the impact of being an unpaid carer, and the financial penalty we pay because of this), so we can't always have the luxury of being picky and choosy over the types of clients we work with...

Perhaps this divergence in experience can be attributed to the adage that those with the affected experience are best placed to know how to best respond to it? But as last years' round table on this topic highlighted, we seem to have precious little opportunity to currently do so, so I've very appreciate of Mike and Liz to have hosted the space, for us, and for everyone who was part of it on the day.

* There's not much of such research out there at the moment, but following last years' round-table on the subject, ipse and other national sector bodies have subsequently gotten interested in this topic (given that it's been identified there are about 500,000 of us!), so there should be more evidences hopefully emerging soon...