Who is a young carer?

 

A young carer is someone under 18 who helps look after someone in their family, or a friend, who is ill, disabled, has mental health issues or misuses drugs or alcohol.

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What might a young carer do?

  • Practical tasks, such as cooking, housework, shopping and family budgeting
  • Emotional support, such as talking to someone who is distressed
  • Personal care, such as helping someone out of bed with a hoist and to help them to dress
  • Helping with siblings
  • Helping to give medicine, collecting prescriptions

How a caring role can affect a young carer:

Emotionally – putting others first, being worried anxious or stressed

Physically – Suffering strains from heavy lifting, not looking after their own health

Socially – Not able to meet up with friends

Educationally – Difficulties concentrating in class, feeling tired, worried, no time for homework

 

Watch Poppy’s Story to give you a real insight into what life can be like for a young carer

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How Crossroads Together can help

  • Time away from caring responsibilities
  • Meet other young carers
  • Take part in peer support and skills based activities
  • Go on day trips
  • Support in school and with homework
  • Learn new skills
  • Someone to listen and a place to talk
  • Information and funding

Giving Young Carers a Voice

Our groups give young carers a chance to talk to one another about their life as a young carer and share their experiences. Our one-to-one sessions offer young carers a chance to talk about how things are going at home giving us an opportunity to identify if further support may be needed.

We will support young carers to be involved in national initiatives, for example; Young Carers Action Day, the Young Carers Festival and Youth Parliament.

We are a Network Partner of Carers Trust which has a strong national presence with regard to influencing national policy and direction.

Young Carers Alliance

We are also a member of the Young Carers Alliance which aims to improve the identification, assessment, and support of young carers and young adult carers and ensure their voices are heard and acted upon. Read more – click here.

Young Carer Logo

We provide young carer services in Cheshire West & Shropshire. Click the link below to view information for your area:

Young Carers in Schools

YCiS is a free initiative that makes it as easy as possible for schools to support young carers, and awards good practice.

Run jointly by Carers Trust and The Children’s Society, the Young Carers in Schools (YCiS) programme works with schools across England to share good practice, provide relevant tools and training, and to celebrate the great outcomes that many schools achieve for young carers.

At Crossroads Together, we a number of a dedicated YCiS project worker who works in partnership with schools to support them to achieve their award.

If you ‘d like to find out more about YCiS, please click here.

 

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