At the beginning of this documentary, we get told that we are going to follow three young children/teenagers for six months and we are going to see what life is like looking after a family member when you're only a teenager. We first of all get introduced to Tom and his brother Joe from Stockport who looks after her mum who has liver disease. The first thing that made me feel a bit saddened for Tom was that when he's older, he wants to be a doctor and said he wants to give his money to his mum to maker her better. At first hearing that, I felt quite emotional at the time because beyond the caring side, there is a very important relationship that needs to be recognised between a mother and daughter and we see what the relationship is like as the relationship went on in the documentary. We then get introduced to Antonia-Rae who is 11 from Worsley. From the first image of her, we already see her working, waiting outside the bathroom, and then having to wash her mum's back. Her mum, Leslie, had a stroke when she was younger and since then, she's been forced to do jobs such as washing pots, vacuuming the floors, do the bedding, dressing her up in the morning and a very important thing, making sure her mum takes her tablets. When the mum had an interview, she talked about after her stroke, she was very down for many years, she didn't know what to do but the most important thing that came from the interview was the appreciation she gave to her daughter, Antonia-Rae. She called her 'my pride and joy', which almost warmed my heart because she appreciates what she does all around the house and without her, she would have been in a very worst state. We then get shown back to Tom and his mum as they go into Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham where we see his mum being checked to see if she can survive a liver transplant. Tom gets interviewed during the check and he tells us he likes to come with his mum to the hospital because this is where he wants to work when he is older and he has a chance to see what everything is going on and also he cares for his mum. We then get showed to a new young carer, Kashanna who is 18 from Slough. She has to look after her mum who is blind. Kashanna talks about what she has been gong through since the age of 4, she talks about having to help her mum pay the bills, take her to the corner shop, she also talks about when she goes out with friends, she has to, first of all, do a load of jobs before she goes out because her mum is not capable to do it. We then hear the emotional story of how her mother went blind after having an operation that without it, she would have died so she had to have the operation to save her life. There was only one thing - the operation would have made her blind. This made me quite emotional because this is the real reason why Kashanna has had to look after her mum for this long and it was a very emotional story that might stick in the audience's minds.
This particular documentary, on YouTube, has been seen 40,850 times (Sunday 20th September 2015 figure) and was presented on BBC One leading up to Children In Need in November of last year. I believe that this documentary is extremely effective as a social action documentary in the way it is trying to reach into people's hearts and to think of other people and to help other people, whether it's just total strangers or even family or friends.
From my own opinion, this is a very effective social action documentary because it allows teenagers aged between 12-18 to look at their life and see how lucky it is compared to the 700,000 children who don't have those kind of luxuries that we do because they are normally spent inside looking after a family member, in this documentary it showed their mum's being looked after. I chose this particular documentary because I also have a granddad that needs looking after every day by my grandma and the stories told by these amazing teens really hit my heart because this is what my grandma goes through on a daily basis and I always want to do my bit to help her so whenever she wants to go out, I always sit with my granddad because she deserves the chance to go out after all the things she has to do inside, so this social action documentary is really effective to me.
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