The house is completely silent at three in the morning, except for the sound of your knees clicking as you lift a full-grown child out of bed for the third time tonight. Your back is screaming, your hands are shaking, but you don’t call anyone. You don’t apply for government respite.
Unity with Ability, a registered National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) service provider based in Punchbowl, specialises in culturally sensitive care for diverse families. They report that there are approximately 3 million informal carers, with unpaid care saving the national economy an estimated $77.9 billion every year. Yet in New South Wales, where over 26% of carers speak a language other than English at home, thousands face this physical toll in complete isolation.
“If you bring a paid stranger into this house to wash your child or change their sheets, what does that say about you? To your mother-in-law, church, community, and neighbors down the street, it says you couldn’t hack it. You abandoned your blood,” says a frontline care coordinator at Unity With Ability.
“You’re the mother, this is your responsibility. So you wipe the sweat off your face and carry on, love isn’t something you hand off to an outsider. Walk through Bankstown, Auburn, or Blacktown at night, suburbs across Greater Sydney where over 37% of residents speak a language other than English, and you won’t see what’s happening behind the front doors”.
Census data shows that Arabic is the most common non-English language spoken by carers in NSW, with over 25,000 Arabic-speaking carers providing unpaid care. In Arabic homes, the word is sharaf, family honour. You don’t take your private life outside, and you don’t bring strangers inside. Washing, feeding, and changing an adult child, for example, is family business. If a mother hires a government worker to do it, the extended family sees this as a mother who shirks her responsibilities. There’s an undercurrent of shame.
In Nepalese families, the belief is that disability isn’t an accident, it’s a debt the family has to pay off from another life. Research from Carers NSW shows that carers from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds report lower rates of formal service use and higher rates of psychological distress due to these cultural obligations. You can’t pay off your karmic debt by hiring someone from outside of the home to come in and make things easier; the mother carries it all, even when she’s aging and struggling.
In Filipino households, hiya (shame) and utang na loob (the debt you owe your family) keep you in service to your family. In NSW alone, thousands of carers were born in the Philippines, and you grow up learning that you owe your life to your blood. When your kid or parent needs full-time care, it’s assumed that you’ll accept the challenge. Asking the state for help is like publicly announcing that you’re not great at meeting your responsibilities, it’s like a declaration of selfishness.
Then comes the NDIS paperwork. Data shows that 54% of carers in Australia experience high or very high levels of psychological distress, a figure that climbs when navigating complex government systems. The migrant families in Australia that do reach out for help are often at a disadvantage because to get government funding, you have to prove how bad things are. You have to write down, on paper, every single thing your child can’t do.
If English isn’t your first language, that’s almost impossible on your own. Words like “functional capacity assessment” don’t mean anything when you’re trying to translate them back to your family.
If you get an interpreter, they’re usually from your local community. So now you’re sitting across from someone who might go to your mosque, church, or local grocery store, telling them about the struggles that are culturally viewed as matters that should stay private. The idea of doing this can be mortifying to families that still value old traditions. Many parents just shut down and say everything’s fine because they’re terrified of word getting out.
Most migrant parents don’t fight application rejections. Where they came from, you don’t argue with officials, if the letter says no, you accept it, close the door, and go back to doing it alone. Research shows CALD communities are significantly underrepresented when it comes to appealing NDIS administrative decisions. When care workers actually manage to help these families, it’s because someone took the time to understand how the house actually runs.
Care providers can’t just walk in and start taking over, you leave your shoes at the door, talk to the elders first and show respect to the head of the house, acknowledging the cultural nuances that matter to the family. You’re an extra pair of hands to the mother of the home, she stays at the top of the care-giving hierarchy.
If the system keeps expecting families to change how they’ve lived for generations just to get a bit of rest, nothing is going to change. The mothers will just keep doing it by themselves until they collapse, and the entire family life feels strained and stretched, when they really don’t need to.
Help is available, but until culturally sensitive help becomes easier to reach, there will be this hidden boundary between the resources Australia has to offer, and migrant families who could thrive if the help felt helpful.
