Parenthood: Disability and Invisibility feat. Unseen Documentary Crew

feat. Unseen Documentary Crew

On this episode, we have some of the filmmakers from the documentary Unseen to go behind-the-scenes on the making of the documentary.

July 10, 2024

Podcast Episode

Audio Player

00:00 | 24:24

The award-winning documentary Unseen gives an unfiltered, honest glimpse into the parent caregivers that so often go ignored or unsupported as they raise children with disabilities.

Today, we have some of the filmmakers on the podcast to go behind-the-scenes on the making of the documentary, and what they’ve learned about the families that so often go Unseen.

To learn more about caregiving benefits that can help, visit the Homethrive website or join us for an upcoming live webinar.

Further Resources

• Unseen Website
• Host a Screening
• Toolkit: Creating Caregiver-Friendly Workplaces
• Homethrive ERG Toolkit

Transcript

Ali Habashi: All right, so tell us a little bit about your assumptions before you started working on this documentary about these parents, and the knowledge that you have now.
Tom Dyer: That has been a wild journey for both of us, I think. When we first started on this project we had no knowledge. We didn't even set out originally to do a film on this but the concept kind of fell into our laps. We met the Ronne family through a mutual connection. We just happened to live near them and heard a little bit about their story and started asking some questions, and we were just floored by what a lot of these families go through on a day-to-day basis, and realized it was something that was happening around us that we were just totally unaware of. Something we say quite a lot is caregiving like this often happens behind closed doors at home. If it's not part of your everyday life or your field of view, you don't witness it and it goes unnoticed. And that was kind of the catalyst for what we wanted to do is to, with as much dignity as possible, bring this to light and put it in front of people who were like us that had no idea that a lot of these challenges existed.

Amanda Dyer: I remember asking Jess and Ryan "Aren't there resources out there? I feel like I've heard of programs and things that can help families who are caregiving." And they said, "Well, yeah, there's some things out there, but even trying to access those is often a battle. You're constantly trying to justify why you need these resources. You're filling out paperwork. You're answering the same questions over and over. You find out that there was a program on paper, but it's not actually funded and therefore it doesn't really help you. Or your family's disqualified for some reason because of a special situation." So it was just very eye-opening to find out that what we thought was out there or programs that existed just really weren't helping families the way that we imagined.

Ali: Was there a moment when you were speaking to the Ronnes that really cinched in your mind, this is a great subject for a documentary?
Amanda: Yeah, I think we had a couple of those moments where, like Tom said, we weren't planning this. We didn't think this is going to be our story, let's go out and find it. We met the families and realized, oh my gosh, there's so much need here. We looked around, and we didn't see any other media that was really telling the story. So it seemed like there was a huge opportunity for it and then we started putting out feelers to see if we could meet some more families, and see if they were saying the same things. And we just heard the same stories over and over and over. And that was the realization that, all right, this is going to be our opportunity to try to make an impact in something important. We realized the need and had the skills and opportunity to do something to contribute. And so it really just became a passion project of ours at that point.

Tom: We heard a lot of the same vocabulary get used from family to family. And one thing that always stuck out to me was, unprompted, every family or every person that we talked to would say "24/7" when they described the consistency of their situation. And so, just the idea that these families are experiencing very similar struggles and challenges, extremely regularly, literally 24/7. I think that was eye-opening to us, especially as we tried to include other families and other voices.

Caregiving Benefits

Find out more ways to support your employee caregivers by learning about the benefits that can help.

Recap

The film aims to raise awareness on the challenges faced by caregivers and how more resources and societal support can help alleviate their burdens. There are ongoing discussions about how communities and workplaces can implement supportive measures for caregivers, ensuring they feel seen and acknowledged.