Stuart and Brenda’s Story
Stuart and Brenda have been married for over 50 years. They’re long-term supporters of Caring Together Charity. Stuart also joined Caring Together Charity as Chair of Trustees in 2017. As a result of their own personal experiences of being unpaid carers, they decided to get involved with the work Caring Together Charity do to support local unpaid carers.
Stuart and Brenda started caring when they adopted three children, with the younger two having learning difficulties. They also cared for Brenda’s parents when they were in their 90s and moved them in after developing their home to be suitable for them. Brenda spoke to us about how her mother suffered from strokes, and how her father suffered with dementia and heart failure. Both her parents needed a lot of care and support at the time, and were unable to live alone without their support.
Stuart and Brenda discuss how they really wanted children, and this was the way to do it for them. Although it had it’s challenges and hard times, they leaned on each other, and faced the hard times together.
“The important thing is that we tackled it as a team. We’re good at different sorts of things – if one of us is down, the other one is up. And we’re able to help the kids in different sorts of ways.”
Both Stuart and Brenda are heavily involved in supporting local unpaid carers. After already supporting another charity with a similar cause, Stuart decided he wanted to continue this vital work, ensuring that every unpaid carer has somewhere to turn for support. This, along with his and his wife Brenda’s personal experience, is what led Stuart to become the Chair of Trustees. Since then, they have been involved in several of Caring Together Charity’s events, including Thriplow Daffodil Weekend, where they were able to bring their daughter Alex along to get involved.
Stuart tells us how the first challenge for unpaid carers is realising that they are one. They never saw themselves as carers. Just parents. It wasn’t until Stuart got involved with Caring Together Charity and became the Chair of Trustees that he realised they were unpaid carers.
“It’s interesting to realise how many unpaid carers don’t realise that’s what they are.”
Once this is realised, many unpaid carers aren’t sure where to get help or support from. Stuart explains how “Caring Together are an extremely powerful resource to help with that.” Stuart and Brenda tell us how looking after yourself as a carer is so important, and how Caring Together Charity can offer that help and support unpaid carers so desperately need. Carers often fall into their caring role suddenly and without any training. They can feel isolated, overwhelmed, and completely lost trying to get the right help for the person they look after.
Caring Together Charity provide services to ease the immense strain that caring can cause. This includes providing a specialist advice line to provide information, holding carers hubs, providing emergency planning support, events and activities for young carers, caring breaks, and counselling sessions. A lot of these services aren’t funded, meaning they rely solely on donations and support from others – including gifts in Wills.
In the 1970s, Stuart and Brenda had simple mirror Wills written. However, 50 years on, as their lives changed over the years, including the adoption of their three children, they realised that these needed to be updated. They needed to ensure that their children were looked after. So they had their Wills updated, and they used this opportunity to leave a gift in their Will to Caring Together Charity.
“We wanted to choose a charity that was doing important work, was doing that work well, and was making a real difference. Caring Together was an obvious choice for us.”
Stuart explains how simple it was to get a new Will written and how easy it was to leave a gift to a charity that’s so close to their hearts. He and Brenda simply had to let the solicitor know which charity they’d like to leave a gift to, and whether this was going to be a percentage of their overall wealth, or a specific amount. Stuart mentioned how important is was for them to first ensure that their family was looked after, before leaving a gift to Caring Together Charity.
“Legacies allow you to give back something to which you’ve had a benefit from. Legacies allowed us to do this.”
Brenda tells us how important it is for charities who have gifts left to them. Charities are able to do a lot more for those they support. On average, it costs Caring Together Charity £300 to support an unpaid carer for a year. Gifts in Wills would mean that we’re able to reach so many more unpaid carers – before they reach crisis point.
Stuart and Brenda’s gift will help to ensure that no unpaid carer is left in crisis, isolated, or struggling alone. It will enable us to be there for unpaid carers for years to come. And it will provide us with new opportunities to support local unpaid carers. They truly are leaving the gift of a lifetime.
If you’d like some more information on leaving a gift in your Will, or what difference a gift in your Will could make, we have plenty of information to help you. It’s free to write your will using our services. Although we’d love it for you to leave a gift to Caring Together Charity, there’s no obligation to do so.
