Caring for Others Without Losing Yourself: A Wellbeing Guide for Women

Women who care for other people, whether at home or as part of their job, often find their own needs slipping down the list without ever deciding to put them there. Looking after yourself in that position is a task in its own right, and it tends to work best when it’s arranged in advance instead of squeezed in after everyone else has been seen to. Examples from paid caring roles and from family life both show what that arrangement can look like, and most of them involve asking for something specific instead of hoping it will be offered.

Professional Caring Roles

Nurses, social workers, nursery staff and foster carers work in roles where emotional strain is expected, and better employers plan support into the working month rather than leaving it to goodwill. Social workers in one London borough, for example, valued monthly reflective practice sessions enough for Ofsted inspectors to mention them, because the sessions help them understand how to improve outcomes for children. Regular supervision also gives staff somewhere to talk through a hard shift, which is difficult to do at home when the details can’t be shared.

The same thinking runs through the support Foster Care Associates gives its foster carers, with a dedicated supervising social worker, out-of-hours advice every day of the year and respite fostering as part of what it offers. A woman in any caring job can ask for her own version by checking whether supervision is scheduled, who covers when she’s away and whether breaks are actually protected.

Caring at Home

Looking after a relative alongside a job brings a different problem, because formal time off is harder to come by. In a survey of working carers in England and Wales, men were granted paid carer’s leave more often than women, at 25% against 15%, and 46% of all those carers had used their own annual leave to provide care. Where an employer has a carer’s policy, ask for it by name, and where there isn’t one, flexible hours are a reasonable first request to make.

Informal help counts as well, whether that’s a sibling who takes over one regular task each week, a neighbour who covers an afternoon or a friend who sits with a relative, since each can give a carer a proper break without anyone filling in a form, provided the request is specific enough for them to say yes.

Making Room for Yourself

Rest is easier to protect when it has a fixed place in the week, so book it in the way you’d book an appointment for someone else. A regular hour that others know about, a named person who covers specific tasks and one friendship that has nothing to do with caring are all small enough to keep up when life is busy.

Support of any kind works best once it exists before it’s needed, so choose one change to put in place, such as a fixed hour, a named person to cover or a conversation with your manager, and see how it holds before adding another. Small arrangements that survive a busy month are worth more than ambitious ones that last a week.