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Hello, I’m Louise, 34, and I’ve been a full-time carer for my mum since I was 18 years old.

My mum, Lynda, is 66 and she suffers from a range of conditions including asthma, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – a progressive lung disease that leaves her with breathing problems and makes everyday activities very difficult.

When her conditions became too much of a challenge,

I ended up leaving college to look after her at our home in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex.

I give her medication, do the cooking, help her get dressed when she can’t do it herself, give her showers when she needs me too – pretty much everything you can think of.

It means I don’t really get a lot of time to myself or buy much for myself either. Like many other carers, we mainly have to live off Carer’s Allowance which doesn’t go very far each week. With costs rising it’s been really difficult to work out how far we can stretch the money. We spend a lot on electricity because Mum needs a special machine to help her sleep at night but bills have been increasing.

With so much to do with little money, small things going wrong can cause huge problems. Mum’s condition means we have to do a lot of clothes washing on a daily basis. So, when our washing machine started breaking down, we couldn’t afford to get it replaced and I was having to take Mum to the launderette in her wheelchair with bags of clothes and spend money there instead.

When I was given a Rank grant to help replace the machine it made a massive difference to me and Mum. Without it we would still be saving up for months and really struggling with that on top of the cost of everything else.