Get to Know Rab

In this episode, we get to know Rab. Rab Ferguson is based in the UK and is the author of The Late Crew, an award-winning children's book about young carers and aliens. When he's not writing about creatures from beyond the solar system, he also works for a charity in the UK, supporting children and families to read together. In this episode, Rab chats with young carer Lani about his journey becoming an author, his motivation for writing The Late Crew and his tips for anyone supporting young carers in the community.

For more information about The Late Crew, please visit: www.thelatecrew.co.uk

This episode of YC Bytes was hosted by Nina Longfellow. It was written and produced by the Carers NSW Young Carer team. The Acknowledgement of Country was recorded by Lua Pellegrini, Wiradjuri Woman and young carer who grew up on Darug country in Western Sydney. Special thanks to our speakers who contributed to today’s episode.

For support as a young carer, check out Carer Gateway or call 1800 422 737 to find out what’s available in your local area. Carer Gateway is a national model of carer support available to any carer across Australia.

Carers NSW is the peak non-government organisation for carers in NSW. We provide information, education and training, research, resources and a range of carer-specific programs and projects to support and raise awareness of family and friend carers in the community. For more information about Carers NSW, please visit the Carers NSW website.

Contact the Young Carer team by calling 02 9280 4744 during business hours, or email yc@carersnsw.org.au.

Subscribe to Carers NSW monthly YC eNews to stay up to date with opportunities and updates from the team, and follow the Carers NSW Young Carer Program on Facebook.

Transcript

Rab:
Helping young people on the inside have a way of seeing themselves and on the outside, making sure there's actual support systems in place because it can't just be all on the young person.

Nina:
Welcome to season two of YC Bytes. If this is your first time tuning in, this podcast series aims to raise awareness of young carers who are children and young people, 25 years and under, who provide care and support for a family member, partner or friend. We believe it's important to shine a light on young carers, as they're often not recognised or understood. My name is Nina and I'm excited to be your host for this season.

Lua:
On behalf of Carers NSW, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country on which we live, learn, and work. We acknowledge the wisdom of Elders past and present, and pay respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities of today.

Nina:
So far in this season, we've spoken to young carers who've shared their interests, hobbies, and creative side. With these conversations, we wanted to show that young carers are more than just their caring role. This episode, we're doing something a little different, as we hear from our very first international guest, Rab Ferguson, who uses his creativity and amazing skills to raise awareness of young carers through writing stories and publishing books. Rab is the author of The Late Crew, an award-winning children's book about young carers – and aliens!

When he is not writing about creatures from beyond the solar system, he also works for a charity in the UK, supporting children and families to read together. The next Late Crew book is coming soon. Lani is a young carer based on the south coast of New South Wales who cares for her mum and sometimes her grandparents. She's a STEM student studying a bachelor of applied science in architecture. And now, let's hear Lani chat to Rab about what inspired him to write The Late Crew and how we can use stories as a way to raise awareness of young carers.

Lani:
Hey Rab, it’s so lovely to meet you. Thank you for joining us today. I had an opportunity to read The Late Crew and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. It’s rare to find books about young carers. I am curious to know what inspired you to hone your focus, and write about young carers?

Rab:
In terms of how I came to be writing about young carers, there's so many kind of different things that have gone into it. There's been personal experiences I've had as an adult. There's been people I've known. And my wife, she was a young carer herself, and I know the impact that had on her and how much that shaped the person who she is today. So a lot of this book really was me writing something that I think my wife would've wanted or needed when she was young. And then previous to my current job, I worked in mental health. I used to deliver young people's projects. And by the nature of supporting mental health, quite a lot of the young people I worked with were young carers who maybe were struggling around energy or anxiety or just numerous different ways that caring responsibilities could impact mental health.

And in that role, I used to love to give children books about mental health because it could be really supportive to them. And I wanted to do the same for young carers. So I looked for appropriate books around young carers, ones that I thought were fun but also informative. And at that time, I couldn't really find any. So that was a big influence of writing this one. I knew what I wanted and I couldn't find it. So I was like, "Well, I guess I'll have to write it so it exists." So that's how I got into it.

Nina:
It's always exciting to hear when someone passionate and driven is able to identify a gap and create an initiative that benefits the wider community. Rab has been able to achieve this with The Late Crew, and that's what Carers NSW works to achieve for carers across the state through systemic advocacy.

Lani:
We've touched a little bit on how you found inspiration for the book. But can I ask how you actually got into writing? Is there something that you've always wanted to do? Or is it something that struck later in life and you were like, "I have to do this right now"?

Rab:
I think I was around 15 years old. I've not always had the best experiences of English lessons or anything. I remember I was in a bottom set all boys English class at one point. So it's not like I was always the most fantastic writer in the world or anything like that. But there was a competition that was advertised. So it was a competition to try and write something under a hundred words. And I did that and I found that I really enjoyed it. So that's what I always recommend and I'd recommend to any people listening who might be interested in writing, is try to write a story that's under 100 words. It's a great challenge and it's a really fun way of getting into writing.

Lani:
Yeah, I might try that myself actually. And it sounds like a fantastic challenge.

Nina:
I like the sound of Rab's writing exercise, developing a short story under a hundred words seems like a great way to tap into your creative side without being too overwhelmed about the thought of undertaking a massive project.

Lani:
I want to ask, what was your original idea? What did you want to see on your pages when you were talking about young carers whilst writing The Late Crew?

Rab:
When I first wrote the book, I actually penciled down three goals that I had for it because I wanted to know why I was writing it and what I was trying to achieve. So the first one was to have young carers be represented in the book and hopefully young carers that read it would feel seen and feel understood, and think, "Okay, there's other people who have lives similar to me", so people won't feel alone. But also then, hopefully be excited that a young carer is the hero of the book. And particularly, as an 8 to 12-year-old reading the book, feel really excited to see a hero similar to themselves. And then my second part of it was that I wanted other young people to understand what it means to be a young carer. It makes your life a bit easier if you have to explain yourself a little bit less.

And then finally was that hopefully, it would help unearth what sometimes gets called hidden carers. There's a lot of thought about, "Okay, how do we help reach out to young carers who don't know that they're a carer or don't self-identify as a carer or haven't even heard that phrase?" And I think stories are probably a great way to do it because stories are exciting to read and enjoyable anyway. And so it's something that hopefully lots of different young people have engaged with. But then maybe at some point someone's reading this story about kids and aliens and this, and they're like, "Oh, wait, this applies to me. Maybe I'm a young carer." And they talk to someone about it. So that was the last one of hoping, that it reached people and helps those kids think, "Oh, maybe this is something that applies to me too."

And then I ended up with a secret fourth one that happened along the way, which was realising that of course adults read books with young people and that maybe, it would actually start to help some teachers and some parents understand a little bit what it might be like for some young people in the community, and understand that little bit about who young carers are and what that means. And that's why we get characters there- There's a character in the story called the one who doesn't understand, who gives the young carers detention for being late, but never stops to ask why they might be late. So yeah, that was the secret fourth one, is actually starting to try and influence adults as well.

Lani:
I love what you've said about hidden carers. I didn't know I was a carer until I was 16 or 17, but I didn't recognise until I was 100% knee-deep into a young carer program. You've done a fantastic job of potentially getting adults to identify their children or the children in their lives to be potential carers. I think that's a really, really wonderful goal.

Rab:
It's certainly been one that's developed. Sometimes, I do workshops directly with young carers with the book, and that's brilliant because I get to spend a lot of time with the young carers and then much longer because it'll be like an hour and a half. Whereas when I do a school assembly, I've got 10 minutes and I read some bits from the books and I do some quick activities with the young people. But what's nice is you then get everyone. So you do get the people that maybe haven't been identified as young carers. But I've certainly known when I've spoken to the different organisations, the carers charities that arrange these assemblies, that sometimes they've spoken to schools and schools have said, "Oh no, we don't have any young carers in this school." And the answer to that is just, "You're wrong." Well, that means is that you don't know you've got young carers in your school. You're statistically incorrect. So it means you, at this point as a school, haven't identified the young carers. But they are there and they're always there.

Lani:
Yeah, I find that to be laughable, especially given that my school shared grounds with another school which catered to students with a higher need disabilities. So a lot of the students in my school were actually carers, they were the siblings of the people who went to the school next to me. And there was still no recognition for actual carers at my school. So there seems to be a systemic issue here.

Rab:
I wanted to ask you how much you felt there’s awareness around young carers in Australia. Because obviously, I'm coming from the British perspective. And what I see here is that maybe over the last 20 or 30 years, there's been really good movements around mental health awareness. There's been really good movements around LGBT+ awareness. And don't get me wrong, there's still prejudice around those things and there's still lots of difficulty, but there's more people know the language and more people are able to speak about it. And I think here, I want to see awareness of young carers and their caring responsibilities spread in the same way those topics have. And I wondered how that compares to Australia.

Lani:
I think things have definitely been improving. I think as a whole, in the past 5 or 10 years, we’ve really gone, “Let’s raise people up”, which is fantastic. But I still think there’s a lot of work to do. We need more funding, more support and recognition. More than just one calendar week per year.

Nina:
Data shows there are more than 83,000 young carers in New South Wales. There are so many carers, but particular young carers I know who fly under the radar and wouldn't actually be counted in this number. So we can only imagine what the real number of young carers are in our state. And so, massive shout out to Rab for representing carers in his writing. I've never read a story about a young carer before, and representation is just so important in shifting public opinion and aiding in identification.

Rab:
I always try and consider, in terms of when responding to young carers or whenever trying to support anyone, you've got to think about the difference between empathy and sympathy, with sympathy being like, "Oh, it's so hard what you do", but that not actually being that helpful to people. Whereas if you're trying and have empathy and you're trying to understand their situation and you try and let them speak and try and hear their voices, then you can actually a bit more look at what support is needed for people.

Lani:
It's actually looking at carers and their work, but still keeping it positive but not being condescending. Can I ask how you feel about that, given how your representation helps young carers?

Rab:
I think it can help internally and externally, if that makes any sort of sense. So internally, you're hoping that young carers having a greater understanding of what ‘young carer’ means might be able to build their own identity. But understand that their identity ... What makes it positive I think is if people understand that their identity goes beyond being a young carer. What I always wanted to do with the books was make sure that it was not just, "Oh, this character's a young carer." But actually this character really likes space, this character's really into maths or science, or they really like adventures or they get into a little bit of trouble or whatever. That they had their own character traits and they were a young carer. And I think that's what makes a positive representation, is when you realise that every young carer is different. Even the caring responsibilities that they take on are very different.

So it's that of, I think positive representation hopefully helps young carers recognise their individuality and recognise their own strengths. And then externally, you're hoping that it does mean that that supports in place and that different people understanding can hopefully be useful to young carers. If teachers and other staff in school understand, then they might be just a little bit more open to thinking, "Okay, why is this young person tired in school? Why is this young person late in school? I'm not going to start by telling them off. I'm going to start by asking an open question." It's that thing of not making assumptions. And even, I suppose externally, it's that same thing of recognising these young people's individuality and then thinking about, "Okay, what can we do to help support them?" So yeah, it is those two things of helping young people on the inside have a way of seeing themselves and on the outside, making sure there's actual support systems in place because it can't just be all on the young person.

Lani:
So we’re getting to the end of our conversation now. I have one more question for you. Do you have any advice to listeners who might be young carers themselves, or might have a young carer in their life?

Rab:
So I think for me, I've had times in my life more as an adult where I've taken on caring responsibilities. And there's a lot of different things that people suggest to you to do to look after yourself. And what can be challenging is you can know you, for example, maybe want to take time for yourself when you get the chance. But you also can know that you want to rest when you get the chance. And then you're struggling to find, is you have to then make that decision of, do I find time to do the things I do I enjoy or do I find the time to rest? And there's lots of things like that.

And so just what I'd say is to seek balance. You're never going to be able to do all of one thing that makes things better. But if you can take a little bit of time to rest, take a little bit of time to do the things that you enjoy. Always try to find the balance. And it is a difficult one, but don't beat yourself up if you're not able to do the advice of how to support yourself because sometimes that's the challenging thing, if you see all this different advice and you think, "Oh, I should be doing this and this and this to look after myself so that I can look after others." And there's not necessarily enough time in life. So try and find those moments of balance and those moments of peace and quiet. And I think that's the best advice I can give.

Lani:
Yeah, for myself, I find that to be really helpful advice. As I've gotten older, I find things that balance that really well. It might be as simple as crocheting, but I can sit in bed, watch something and crochet at the same time. I still get to do something I love to do, but I also get to rest whilst doing it.

Nina:
Finding a balance in my life is a constant struggle as a young carer. Although we're masters of multitasking, it can be difficult to squeeze in seeing friends and having hobbies, all while maintaining good health and getting enough sleep. For me, a positive aspect of caring is the skills I've developed, like strong time management, working under pressure and managing heavy workloads. It's made me into a really resilient person, which I'm grateful for.

Lani:
That looks like all we’ve got time for today, Rab. As I said at the start of our chat, I absolutely loved The Late Crew. I think it’s a fantastic book and I cannot wait for other people to read it. Thank you so much for your time and answering all of my questions. I hope you have an absolutely wonderful day.

Rab:
Brilliant, and thank you very much. Thank you for talking to me.

Nina:
Don't forget to check out the show notes to learn more about young carer supports and find information about Rab's award-winning book, The Late Crew, and the brand new sequel, The Late Crew and the Copycat Creature.

This episode was hosted by me, Nina Longfellow. It was written and produced by the Carers NSW Young Carer team. Special thanks to our speakers, Rab and Lani, who contributed and were part of today's episode. The Acknowledgement of Country was recorded by Lua, a young carer who is featured in our first episode of the season.

Carers NSW is the peak non-government organisation for carers in New South Wales, providing information, education and training, research, resources, and a range of carer-specific programs and projects, to support and raise awareness of family and friend carers in the community. For more information, please visit www.carersnsw.org.au or call 02 9280 4744. Thanks for listening.