15/08/2026
You can be lovingly tethered to someone and still need somewhere that belongs only to you.
Something Lesley says in this video has really stayed with me: “We live with carers coming into our space every single day.” Her home is still her home, but it is also where care happens. Where people come and go, and where she has to engage, explain, organise, guide and remain available.
So when she finally gets a small amount of respite, she doesn’t want to spend it talking about caring. She wants to get out, have privacy and be somewhere nobody needs anything from her. In her words, she wants to “remember me.”
And I think there is something much bigger in that for the care sector.
We can have groups, activities, short breaks, hotel stays, schemes and signposting. But if a carer cannot arrange the cover required to access them, or their limited respite still keeps them inside the identity of “carer”, having support available is not the same as being supported.
Solāis was never created specifically as a carer service, but carers kept finding us. And they kept coming back.
For half an hour, the door closes. Nobody needs an answer. Nobody needs looking after. They can talk, cry, laugh, lie quietly or say absolutely nothing.
There is something profoundly important about giving someone who spends so much of their life making space for another person a little space that is entirely their own.
I’m not saying Solāis will be for every carer. It won’t be. But I feel very strongly that I want to do my part to make sure as many carers locally as possible at least know that we exist, so that if this kind of support would work for them, they know it is here.
If you know a carer, work with carers or are connected to organisations in the care sector, I would be incredibly grateful if you could share this and help it reach the people who might need to see it.
Maybe we need to think less about how much respite exists, and more carefully about whether carers can actually reach it.
