THIS week Emmerdale celebrates its 50th anniversary - a reminder of the extraordinary longevity - and impact - of soap.
Since October 1972, the Yorkshire soap has been in living-rooms across the country. What started as a sleepy lunchtime drama about farming folk evolved into a Bafta-winning prime time show with spectacular stunts, not least a plane crash and a motorway pile-up.
A show that’s beamed into homes five nights a week has the power to educate and inform, as well as entertain. And it is the quieter moments where Emmerdale often excels. It is the only television drama I can think of that has portrayed the reality of life for unpaid carers. Hardly the sexy stuff - the steamy affairs, kidnappings and serial killers that pull in the ratings - but a crucial issue nonetheless.
Emmerdale has not only highlighted carers, it has allowed their storylines to breathe. Its depiction of early onset dementia, and the impact on a young family, spanned two years - unheard of in soap, where social and health issues are usually done and dusted in a few weeks. For this storyline, which followed village vicar Ashley Thomas’s gradual decline with vascular dementia, Emmerdale worked closely with the Alzheimer’s Society. The charity even used a groundbreaking episode, entirely from Ashley’s perspective, as a training video. Emmerdale viewers saw the impact on Ashley’s wife, who became his carer, and children. As someone who has lived in a family where early onset dementia took hold, I found this depiction refreshing, and moving. In 2017 I attended an Emmerdale press event and was struck by how the writers, actors and producers felt huge responsibility to get Ashley’s story right.
Emmerdale is once again highlighting care, in a terminal cancer storyline, and its repercussions on family and friends, and the aftermath of popular character Marlon Dingle’s stroke. Poignant scenes have shown him adjusting to life at home, with his new wife as his carer. Mark Charnock, who plays Marlon, won a top acting prize for his performance at last week’s National Television Awards.
Also at the NTAs was Kate Garraway who, accepting an award for her documentary Caring for Derek, spoke of the “care crisis” in the UK. In her programme, the presenter highlighted the effect on family life when her husband came home after a year in hospital battling long-term effects of coronavirus. Any of the 6.5 million unpaid carers in the UK will have recognised, in that documentary, those grim symbols - hoist, handrails, wheelchair, commode - of invalid life at home. Familiar to me for years, when I was a carer for my mum.
These programmes have brought unpaid carers, who are usually invisible, into living-rooms. Every day, 6,000 people become carers; for some it’s sudden, for others it creeps up, with ageing parents or a partner’s health deteriorating. Unpaid carers are an essential part of the health and care system, worth billions of pounds a year, yet analysis by the Nuffield Trust reveals that they’re hit by diminishing local authority support. Funding for respite care fell by 42per cent over the last five years. Council spending on services for carers has fallen by 11per cent. A survey by NHS Digital this year found that unpaid carers feel increasingly isolated, stressed and depressed. With around half having to give up jobs, rising energy bills and the cost of living add to the pressures.
The reduction of support reveals a huge gulf between Government rhetoric and reality for carers. It’s time for emergency funding, including a Carer’s Allowance increase in line with inflation. Unpaid care is hidden behind closed doors. And, says the Nuffield Trust, there is a “near total invisibility of carers in wider policymaking”. I hope other TV dramas follow Emmerdale’s lead and raise the visibility of an army of people who, as Carers Trust policy director Joe Levenson says, are “selflessly propping up our ailing health and social care systems”.
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