Advice for supporting PGRs who are carers

By Calum Cameron-White, Research Culture Project Assistant.

I’m writing this blogpost about the time I spent as a carer, whilst working in a university environment. Based on my lived experience, I’m here to deliver a few hundred words with some concrete proposals and advice for anyone who is supervising, supporting, or designing programmes for postgraduate researchers who are carers.   

The biggest issue with being a carer is the gap between expectation and reality. I found that people either tended to assume it’s not really a big deal and that you can live a ‘normal’ life (whatever that means), or they sentimentalised the process (which can be problematic since care is often complex and demanding, and so often ends in death), some people even do both. As this excellent research highlights, the home is a complex location for doctoral carers. The process of physically administering a person from one place to another while trying to prevent them from falling, or cleaning human waste, or facing towers of paperwork while having to endure endless economising, doesn’t tend to leave much room for sentimentality. Your sentiment is spent on the act of care. I found being a carer was at times like having your face rubbed in the dirt while people called you a flower. The praise can be flattering, but the reality is difficult. 

The next issue I want to emphasise is the fact that a significant but generally unrecorded percentage of carers are involuntary, and sometimes people don’t like to acknowledge that. This can complicate the process of becoming a carer which is often something that ‘happens to’ people, even if they might see it coming in advance of it happening. I would suggest to any researcher who might be wondering if they are considered to be a carer that they probably are.  

The art of effective self-advocacy is something that you will have to learn fast. Try to avoid keeping your status as a carer informal or private – some people around you will pressure you to take this approach and it might seem superficially easier, but it will likely cut you off from forms of recognition and support. Combatting assumptions, preconceptions and cultural biases often becomes part of the experience of being a carer. This isn’t a heart-warming movie or a sitcom episode, the family is a highly political unit and the patriarchy lumbers on, so make moves to protect yourself and the person you are responsible for. It will probably be worthwhile to get a formal, written record of carer status, such as a Carer Passport, and depending on the nature of your care responsibilities, consider going through the process of getting Lasting Power of Attorney (Scottish Power of Attorney legal details here). Here is additional information on the Carer’s Act (Scotland) 2016 which specifically protects carers.

The University of Glasgow has a Student Carer’s Plan (it’s likely your own institution has similar documentation too). This is an important document which offers practical support and protection to postgraduate researchers. I know this because I was involved in piloting the plan for researchers in the College of Arts. There was some formal recognition for carers at the university prior to this but staff were frequently unaware of its existence. This does not mean there were not examples of good practice, but they would often have been dependent on the goodwill and knowledge of individuals rather than any formal policy and support.  

The Student Carer’s Policy is also an important document, and my hope is that both of these documents are distributed widely and openly amongst those with care responsibilities and the researchers and staff who are supervising or managing them. It’s one thing to take on all the responsibilities involved in becoming a carer, it’s another dealing with the disruption it can potentially cause to a degree or a career. 

The right of carers to equitable access and engagement in higher education is supported by equal opportunity legislation, including antidiscrimination and disability discrimination legislation. I include disability legislation because carers also have increased experiences of depression, anxiety and poor quality of life, with one study suggesting that as many as a quarter of carers experience disabilities of their own.  

The Equality Act 2010 clearly states that discrimination and harassment against carers because of their responsibilities or the individuals they care for, are illegal acts. I should highlight here that the above linked research article also documents the likelihood that a carer will have limited access to legal resources due to increased economic disadvantage. A working knowledge of the legislation is essential for PGR-carers, and awareness of the Equality Act and what it says, will help PGR-carers and the staff who advocate for them, to not be dismissed out of turn because of a lack of understanding of both policy and the law. 

Carers are amongst the most under-represented and disadvantaged groups within higher education. They are four times more likely to leave their studies in higher education. Non-completion of studies has implications not just for the individuals themselves, but also for higher education institutions because student retention is one key measurement of success. I want to add that equity issues and sheer waste of human potential frequently involved in this are also very significant. The added additional workload more generally is an issue for carers due to the impact of their care responsibilities on attendance and participation in postgraduate research. One of the most difficult dynamics of being a carer is the perception which can emerge that you are unreliable, when in fact your reliability in another context is what is causing this perception. This division of loyalties can be extremely stressful to manage. These dynamics have been described by others as being more pronounced within ‘elite’ institutions, which are traditionally statistically harder to access for disadvantaged groups, but at this juncture I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge and praise the work our own institution is doing in widening participation. 

To summarise, many supervisors, graduate schools, researcher developers and others with responsibility for the research experience and culture will encounter postgraduate carers in their careers. Having awareness of the law and institutional policy, as well as the research documenting the serious impact on the individual, will benefit everyone, and hopefully support many more talented researchers to be enabled towards PhD completion.