Young carers

A significant number of children and young people are caring for a parent or parents with mental health problems defined as serious or severe, and enduring. Children and young people with these responsibilities are often referred to as young carers. It is important that they are recognised as children and young people in the first instance, then as carers. And what helps these young people most is the support that is provided to their parents. 

This research provides a three-way perspective on the experiences & needs of children who are living with & caring for parents with severe & enduring mental illness. The views of children, parents & key workers were sought in order to provide deeper insight into the needs of families & the nature of interfamilial relationships, as well as the relationships between service users & providers. Child protection & medical research has long proposed a link between parental mental illness & the risk to children of abuse, neglect & developmental delay.

Mainstream literature on paid care for children, frail elderly people and people with chronic illness or disability, and unpaid care provided usually by family members within households and kin networks tends to establish dichotomies: formal/informal, commodified/non-commodified. Recent feminist literature rejects these dichotomies, developing models of social care in which the interconnections of paid and unpaid care are mapped within policy frameworks.

This research looks at the experiences of 60 young people caring for an ill or disabled parent. It examines how young carers' move into adulthood and how their caring responsibilities affect this.

In this article, we compare accounts given by young carers and specialist support workers about the riskiness of becoming a carer relatively early in life. We argue that since the mid-1990s, the policy response has problematised the comparatively early adoption of a caring role as a risk factor for future personal development. This temporal issue has become societally organised around concern about NEETs (young adults not in education, employment or training).

Little is known about the population of caregiving youth in the United States. We sought to describe the participation rates, demographics, and caregiving tasks among sixth graders served by the American Association of Caregiving Youth (AACY) in its Caregiving Youth Project (CYP) in Palm Beach County, FL and evaluate the perceived benefit of AACY services. Sixth grade enrollment data from eight middle schools between 2007 and 2013 were obtained from The School District of Palm Beach County and the AACY. Data were obtained using a retrospective review of AACY program participant files.

The Scottish Executive commissioned this literature review. The overall aim was to provide a comprehensive summary of existing knowledge of how young carers are identified and how their needs are assessed and met. Therefore the review largely concentrated on the interaction between young carers and their families on the one hand and service agencies on the other. Understanding the needs of young carers was an important context for the review, but was not the primary focus.

This study, funded by The True Colours Trust in association with The Princess Royal Trust for Carers, investigates the experiences, needs and service responses to the 290,000 young adult carers aged 16-24 in the UK today.

This article highlights five ways that councils can better support carers. It draws on good practice from Sunderland City Council, Rochdale MBC, Hertfordshire CC and Sefton MBC, the four councils who were awarded beacon status last year for the way they supported carers.

This small-scale survey explored how effectively young carers were identified by councils and their partners. It also examined the assessment and delivery of services for young carers and their families. It drew on evidence from visits to eight council areas, focus groups with young carers and meetings with those who provide young carer support services