Worcestershire Children First thanks county’s young carers

The company works with YSS to provide the Worcestershire Young Carers service, to ensure that young carers and their families receive tailored one to one support.

The service provides support to young people aged between 18 and 25 who are considered young adult carers.

Young Carers role can be for a parent, a sibling or a grandparent due to illness, disability, physical or mental health difficulties or substance misuse.

Councillor Andy Roberts, Cabinet Member for Children and Families, said: ”Our young carers play such a key role in the lives of those who they support, so it is crucial to us that we work with our partners to ensure that they receive all the help and support they need too. I’d like to thank all our young carers for all their hard work and dedication and I’d like to thank our partners for their fantastic ongoing support and keeping young people connected during the pandemic.”

Jonathan Cawdron, Team Manager at YSS said: ”During the pandemic, many of our young carers have found themselves further isolated and have had to find incredible resilience to cope with this unprecedented situation. Therefore I think it is vital that we use Carers Week as an opportunity to raise awareness of the difficulties that young carers face and the immense strength that they show in supporting their loved ones while balancing school and other elements of their lives. Carers Week is particularly poignant this year as it hopefully marks a turning point for our service. We are now planning for summer activities and cannot wait to start safely meeting up with young people again.“

The project has done what it can to support its young carers to stay in touch and remain connected.

Club Zoom was launched to the young carers in February and March, giving them the opportunity to join other young carers albeit virtually. As discussed, a weekly social media drop in allowed young carers and their families to reach out to us and stay in touch.

Social media was also utilised to communicate with service users through vlogs, memes, posts and videos.

In March, the Young Carers quarterly newsletter was released to a readership of approximately 400 families. This further enabled young people to continue to feel part of the Worcester Young Carers community.