Maria Tidy: "When MYTIME contacted me, my mind was made up. I knew I wanted to help."
Published: August 5, 2021 | Updated: 6th August 2021
Oh, how it’s been missed but it’s back this weekend…
The Shake and Stir Vintage Festival will again be entertaining thousands as it makes a triumphant return to Southbourne.
It features vintage fashion, local traders and live music playing the sounds of the 1920s, 1970s and everything in between.
More details on the two day event over Saturday and Sunday can be found here.
This year’s celebration is raising money for MYTIME Young Carers.
The charity supports children and young people caring for family members.
Maria Tidy, Community Development Manager at MYTIME Young Carers, is passionate about supporting young carers, defined as children and young people who are caring for a family member.
Here she tells us about these ‘superheroes’ with so much conviction and emotion that, although she only started working at the charity under a year ago, it’s clear they’ve left a lasting impression.
Maria also talks about why she joined MYTIME, the work that they do and why she has so much admiration for young carers.
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“Back in December 2020, I was on the lookout for a new job. I had been approached by a few different charities but when MYTIME contacted me, my mind was made up. I knew I wanted to help.
“I care for my husband who has a chronic illness, so I felt like I could relate to what these children go through each day, the responsibilities, and the frustrations. However, I also realise I’m an adult and to a certain extent I chose my responsibilities when I got married. For these kids, it’s just their life and to think about them doing so much at such a young age, it just blew me away. To me, they’re superheroes.
“Looking after a chronically ill person might involve anything from getting them out of bed in the morning to taking on the housework or cooking dinner. Any adult who has looked after a family member can relate to that, but the children we work with can be as young as five years old.
“It just makes you think, when do you usually learn to wash whites and darks separately, how to cook dinner, or when to change the bedsheets? These young children grow up just knowing these things because they have to.
“We recently spoke to some of the older individuals we support about what they wanted from us and they said they wanted to know how to make utility bills cheaper. When I was a teenager that was not something I thought about at all, but some young carers are running a whole household, as well as providing physical and emotional care.
“As you can imagine, being a child or a young adult and caring for a family member can take its toll. That’s where MYTIME comes in.
“Like the name suggests, we give young carers time. Time to have fun, time to make friends and time to relax.
“One of the ways we help them switch off and enjoy themselves is with our Memory-Making days and weekends away at our retreat centre in Worth Matravers. We do all sorts of activities from paddle boarding to water parks and theatre trips. I’ve even put my name down to do a Mud Run with some of the kids!
“During one of our recent art workshops, one of the young lads said it was the happiest he’d been in a long time. To know we’re making a real difference to their lives is so powerful.
“Over the past year, we haven’t been able to host our weekends away or activities like we normally would. That’s been a real challenge because if anything, the young carers have needed our support more than ever and we had to think of new ways to support them.
“The pandemic has been especially difficult for young carers because most of them are looking after vulnerable people. To keep their family safe, lots of them couldn’t go past their front door, not even for the daily walks we all had. A lot of them were very isolated and lonely. That’s when we set up our Zoom youth clubs. At first, we only had a few people join us but now we run three Zooms a week with over 90 young carers joining each time!
“Although MYTIME started out offering young carers a break from their responsibilities through weekends away and activities, it quickly became clear the challenge of everyday life wasn’t going away. So, we expanded into offering support at school and employability workshops. We can’t change the reality of their everyday, but we can find ways to make it easier and help them prepare for the future.
“School can be a real challenge for young carers; they may not be able to complete homework on time, they might be late, and they might find it hard to concentrate. Often young carers struggle with their grades or to keep up with classmates who don’t have the same responsibilities as them. They often don’t tell anyone, including teachers, about their home life because they’re afraid of being bullied.
“MYTIME works with schools to help teachers understand how to support a young carer. For example, typically, if you don’t hand in homework or you’re late, you’ll be given detention; however, that’s potentially one of the worst things you could do for a young carer. Detention after school means they’ll be late home to someone who is relying on them and they’ll likely have even less time that evening to do homework because they still need to do their usual jobs. So, we work with schools to educate teachers on what they can do instead to help young carers with their education. 
“School also has an impact on the rest of these kids’ lives. They’ve got their whole future ahead of them and often their caring responsibility takes priority.
“To try and help lessen the impact that might have on their future, MYTIME runs an employability programme. The programme teaches skills like writing a CV and explores how the young people can find jobs that suit their strengths.
“We also connect young carers with someone in the local area who is doing a job they aspire to, so if one of them says they want to be a paramedic, we’ll find a paramedic for them to talk to. It’s all about helping to level the playing field, so these young carers get the same opportunities from life as other children.
“In order to run our activities and programmes, we rely on donations and fundraising. For example, each weekend away costs £3,000 to run, so if we can raise £24,000 in a year, we can put on eight weekends and support 160 young carers. During Covid, lots of our fundraising events were cancelled, meaning we need to make up for lost time.”
