Steve Ellis, head of strategic lending development at The Phoenix Group, and Geoff Garrett, co-founding director of Henry Dannell, featured on the June Diversity and Inclusivity Finance Forum (DIFF) podcast to speak about being the parents and male carers of differently-abled children.
Ellis said his firm had a carers’ network and gave staff with caring duties 10 days of leave. However, when an internal survey was conducted, many staff did not like being referred to as carers because they felt they were simply doing what they could to support their loved ones.
He said: “Those things, inherently, are care. Those things, inherently, when you go into the corporate world, when you do a nine to five, those things do take reasonable adjustments and you can’t expect an employer to do those things unless you talk to them about it.”
He said firms also needed to take into account that although the label of being a carer did not “work for everyone” that did not mean suitable policies were not needed.
Garrett said it was all about communicating with employers, especially in a sector where much of the role is performance-based and he encouraged anyone who needed extra support from their place of work to speak about it.
Ellis’ 17-year-old daughter Luca has “an array of complicated chronic illnesses” and she was first diagnosed at 18 months.
Garrett’s daughter Hannah did not display any obvious concerns when she was growing up except for being behind with milestones. She was initially deemed to have global developmental delays but was eventually diagnosed with a genetic mutation at 14, which makes her predisposed to epilepsy and varying learning difficulties. Although he described her level of understanding as “fantastic”, her level of speech is equivalent to that of an 18-month-old.
She is currently at college doing a life skills course.
Work, life and care balance
When Ellis’ daughter was going through the period of diagnosis, he had been given the opportunity to start a new business with his previous employer and did not tell his firm of his daughter’s developing condition.
He said the labels “disabled” and “carer” made the situation seem more real.
Ellis said it was “nonsensical” to think that way and added: “It wasn’t shame at all. It was more [thinking] ‘that locks us into something that we think we still might have a chance of fixing.”
Ellis said he and his wife refused to apply for a blue disability badge for years, which caused some inconvenience, because it “felt like a tiny grain of control”. However, he advised anyone listening to tell their employer about any personal problems which may affect work, adding: “they have to know”.
“Work life balance doesn’t work when you’ve got something like this and you’re not talking to them about it,” he said.
Garrett said acceptance was a big part of living with a disability.
He said his daughter’s diagnosis came at the start of his career. The epilepsy “crept in” when she was six-years-old and usually at nighttime. He was self-employed and running his business and he said this took a toll on him but he “just cracked on”.
Garrett’s wife took on most of the care duties.
Not coping
Ellis revealed that he suffered a breakdown around the time the UK first went into lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as his mum had a stroke, his mother-in-law died and Luca had a difficult year. He was also travelling a lot for work.
He said: “I didn’t notice it, it crept up on me insidiously but thankfully my best friend and my missus both pulled me to one side and said – over Christmas – ‘you need to do something because this is really bad’.”
“It was an uncomfortable few months,” he said. “I did end up talking to my employer and I did end up taking a negotiated exit with them.”
Ellis said he “completely misunderstood” his mental reserves and added that if he carried on the way he did for another month he would have been in a worse condition.
Listen to the podcast [35:25] featuring Steve Ellis, head of strategic lending development at The Phoenix Group and Geoff Garrett, co-founding director of Henry Dannell.
