**6. Supporting people living with epilepsy**

Caring for people living with epilepsy can involve several skills, including technical tasks such as dealing with medical equipment, emotional support, being able to adapt if needs change, or working with health care professionals involved in the person's health or care. These roles may be in addition to other demands in terms of parents or caregivers such as their family, other relationships, work, home, financial constraints, social life, their own health, and hopes and wishes. Parents or caregivers may cope well with multitasking, or they may find it difficult to cope as some areas of their lives are being neglected. As a teacher in a school setting, it may be hard to merely focus on PLWE while having a class with multiple learners with different care needs that also seek their attention, let alone their teaching role. However, according to the Epilepsy Society (UK) [61], it is essential that parents, caregivers, and teachers who are caring for someone with epilepsy, the following are the aspects or activities they should do to support PLWE:


The activities aforementioned are critical to the care of someone with epilepsy and may present a lot of responsibility to the parent, caregiver, or teacher. It should also be noted that these activities are very vital and valuable to PLWE. Apart from attending to the presented activities, it should be noted that co-morbid exist as well. Thus, PLWE may also have other conditions that require extra care needs. Given the need for social welfare's support for PLWE, sometimes this becomes a turmoil as seizures may be infrequent or unwitnessed by others. Thus, other people may not see the need for care; hence, some social services do not always distinguish epilepsy as a condition with particular care needs.

Caring and supporting PLWE carries physical attention and psychological and emotional attention needs. Thus, living with epilepsy can have a psychological impact which may also affect parents, caregivers, or teachers as their caregivers. This could include stress, depression, or mood changes. In addition, as epilepsy is an individual condition, it can change over time [61]. The amount of care that is needed may increase or decrease. The situation of the parent, caregiver, or teacher could change. They may become physically unable or have now focused on their own health needs as well as the need to regain their independence. It may also be that those providing care are even caring for more than one person, increasing the caregiver's strain. This is some of the baggage that comes with caring for people living with epilepsy, and there is a need to find ways to cope and maintain the caring role. In contrast, some people may expect that the caregiver can continue to manage regardless of their own needs or strains just because they always have done before.
