EVERY year we brought her flowers, holding them close so she could smell and touch them. She had no idea, of course, that it was Mother’s Day because for years dementia had gnawed away at her mind and body, until there was little of her left.

On Mother’s Day I did what I did pretty much every other Sunday. I washed my mum’s face, brushed her hair, cut her fingernails, fed her lunch, wiped her mouth, turned up the songs on the radio, and held her hand when pain and confusion overwhelmed her. Sometimes I wondered if, stirring in that ravaged mind, was a vague recollection of who I was. Then she’d look up, gazing at nothing with the glassy eyes that had long ago deprived her of any sight, and I knew she had no idea who I was.

For more than a decade I helped to look after my mum, whose strain of dementia left her blind and bedridden. I’d go to my parents’ house after work and at weekends to help with the care and to give my dad a break. For several years, before we got a home care package in place - thanks to support and advice from the wonderful Alzheimer’s Society - we were getting Mum up and putting her to bed, and in between dressing and washing her, lifting her off the floor when she frequently fell over, and generally providing the round-the-clock care and attention that dementia demands. It was exhausting, physically and emotionally, and I was juggling it with a demanding fulltime job, running a busy features department. Looking back, I don’t know how I did it.

If you’ve never had to be a carer, you are lucky. I have spent much of my adult life as a carer. Three months after my mum died, I was caring for my dad in the final stages of his terminal illness. I spent nights on the sofa next to his invalid bed, before getting up for work the next day.

Being a carer is, in some ways, a privilege and a precious connection with a loved one. But the daily reality of it is backbreaking, lonely, traumatic and exhausting. According to the 2021 Census, there are approximately 4.7 million unpaid carers in England. The real figure is much higher, because many people looking after loved ones don’t see themselves as carers. Carers UK estimates the number has risen to 10.6 million - that’s one in five adults in the UK currently providing unpaid care. Women are more likely to become carers, and more women than men provide high intensity care at a working age. One in seven carers are juggling work and care.

In terms of taking the burden off the NHS, the value of unpaid care was estimated at £530 million per day and £193 billion per year during the pandemic. But this cannot be sustained without more support for unpaid carers and investment in respite that is vital for their own health and wellbeing.

The Care and Support Alliance has urged Jeremy Hunt to use his Budget to double Government funding for carers’ breaks, as part of a wider investment in social care. Age UK, a member of the CSA, found that a third of carers polled felt overwhelmed. The CSA says unpaid carers have been left to fill a gap due to a “shortfall of social care services compared to growing demand from older and disabled people”. Unpaid care relies largely on the goodwill and labour of family and friends. But, warns the CSA, a failure to provide adequate support for carers is “greatly increasing the risk of these informal care arrangements breaking down, in which case the responsibility of providing care falls wholly on the state”.

Emily Holzhausen, co-chair of the CSA, says the investment the Chancellor is being urged to provide would help to support the wellbeing and quality of life for families and prevent some from having to give up work to care. Without it, she says, “families, public services and the economy will continue to count the costs of under-investment in social care”.

Unless they have adequate respite, carers’ own health will suffer and for many, that means they cannot continue caring. If we don’t we care for the carers, Mr Hunt, we are left with a false economy.