City of London Corporation
Young Carers’ Strategy
2015-18
Prepared by: / Simon CribbensReviewers: / Chris Pelham, Shaista Afzal
Owner: / Chris Pelham
Approved by:
Implementation date: / July 2015
Review date: / + 12 months
Document end date: / tbc
Version: / 1
Contents
1 Introduction 2
2 Young Carers 2
3 Supporting young carers 4
4 Young carers needs assessment 4
5 Supporting transition 5
6 Delivering for young carers 6
7 Implementation and oversight 6
1 Introduction
1.1 Our vision is that the City’s children and young people are seen, heard and helped, they are effectively safeguarded, properly supported and their lives improved by everyone working together.
1.2 For those children and young people in our communities who are young carers, it is crucial that we deliver this vision as we know that their caring role can have an adverse impact on their health, education and leisure activities.
1.3 This strategy sets out our commitment to deliver that vision for young carers. It aims to raise awareness of young carers, and their support needs, among professionals, families and friends. In doings so it will strengthen the services and support available to enable young carers to achieve a balance between caring for others and fulfilling their own needs.
1.4 Given the small resident population in the City of London, the number of young carers now and in the future will be few, but our commitment is to ensure accessible and comprehensive support is available at the point of need, regardless of whether our support is to one or to many young carers.
1.5 Our Young Carers’ Strategy complements our support for adult carers, and sits alongside our Children and Young People’s Plan, and strategies for early help, and children with special education needs and disabilities. It is through the work driven by these strategies that we will identify young carers, and develop integrated service offers to support children, young people and their families.
2 Young Carers
2.1 A young carer is someone aged 18 or under who helps look after a relative who has a condition, such as a disability, illness, mental health condition, or a drug or alcohol problem. In doing so they often take on practical and/or emotional caring responsibilities that would normally be expected of an adult.
2.2 Some of the ways young people care for someone are:
· staying in the house a lot to be there for them
· helping them to get up, get washed or dressed, or helping with toileting
· doing lots of the household chores like shopping, cleaning and cooking
· looking after younger brothers and sisters
· providing emotional support or a shoulder to cry on.
2.3 Most young carers look after a family member – such as one of their parents or a brother or sister. Some children give a lot of physical help to a brother or sister who is disabled or ill. Young carers sometimes start caring at a very young age and don't really realise they are carers. Other young people become carers overnight because of sudden changes at home or with their family.
2.4 The exact number of young carers in the UK is not known. Many caring roles are hidden and not known until a young person or their family identify have needed or decided to identify themselves to services.
2.5 In 2011, the Census identified 177,918 young unpaid carers (5 to 17-years-old) in England and Wales. Of these, 54% were girls and 46% were boys. Within England, the North West had the highest proportion of young carers providing unpaid care (2.3% of young people), with London just fractionally behind (at 2.2%). There was an increase in the number of unpaid carers aged 5 to 17 observed in all regions between 2001 and 2011, including in London where there were just over 26,000 young carers in 2011.
2.6 Census data for the number of young carers is only available at a regional level, and therefore a City of London total is not given. The numbers of young carers identified by the City Corporation has at any one time, been less than five, but we are aware that research supports the likelihood of under-reporting.
2.7 This research also suggests that children who are young carers may live in homes where one or both parents have an alcohol problem, within families where there are mental health problems or where physically disabled family members need support.
2.8 Young carers face additional challenges in their home life that can be a real obstacle to doing well at school, developing friendships or exploring their interests – things that should be part of everyone’s childhood.
2.9 Despite these challenges young carers make a significant contribution to the well-being of others. They provide care and emotional support to their family members and enhance their lives as a result.
2.10 This group of children and young people may need the provision of appropriate support from a number of sources to ensure they benefit from achieving the same outcomes aspired to for all children and young people.
3 Supporting young carers
3.1 Young carers should not do the same things as adult carers, nor should they be spending a lot of their time caring for someone, as this can get in the way of them doing well at school and doing the same kinds of things as other children or young people.
3.2 It is important that young carers are able to decide how much and what type of care they are willing or able to give, or whether they should be a carer at all.
3.3 This strategy sets out our priorities to support young carers. These are:
· Early identification of young carers to better support them and their families
· Personalised and integrated support tailored to needs and aspirations, providing young carers with a life of their own
· Young carers are involved and consulted in the care of their loved ones and protected from inappropriate caring roles
· Improved physical and mental health and wellbeing
· Improved social and economic wellbeing
· Support with change, emergencies, planning for the future and the transition to adult services
3.4 Our priorities recognise that a young carer’s welfare will be promoted and safeguarded by working towards the prevention of any child undertaking inappropriate levels of care and responsibility for any family member.
3.5 We will treat young carers as children first, supporting their right to feel happy and well, to have adequate leisure time, good emotional and physical health and a family life. We will ensure they have the same access to education and career choices as their peers.
3.6 Delivering these priorities will inform a whole family approach offering a co-ordinated assessment and services to young carers and their whole families. It will recognise that young carers and their families are the experts on their own lives, and fully inform and involve them in the delivery of support services.
4 Young carers needs assessment
4.1 From April 2015 the law was changed to make it easier for young carers to get help. A social worker from the City’s Children and Families team must visit and see if a young carer needs any help if they or their parents request this. When we get such a request we will carry out a “young carers needs assessment” to decide what kind of help a young carer and their family might need.
4.2 The assessment will decide whether it is appropriate for a child or young person to care for someone else and will always take into account whether the young person wants to be a carer. Our assessment will consider the whole family so that we can best assess how to prevent a child or young person taking on excessive or inappropriate care tasks. The assessment of a young carer’s needs will also look at their education, training, leisure opportunities and other support that might contribute to their wishes for their day to day outcomes.
4.3 We will also undertake an assessment of young carers we identify where it appears that they may have needs for support. In assessing a young carer we will always involve them, and include an independent advocate if the young person needs it needs it.
4.4 Once the Children and Families team have carried out a young carers needs assessment we will provide a written record of the assessment. This will include whether we think the young person needs support, whether our services will provide that support. It should also explain what a young carer or their parents can do if they disagree with the assessment.
4.5 We will use the young carer’s needs assessment, and the commitments of our Children and Young Peoples Plan to ensure that young carers and their families receive high standards of support and services appropriate to meet their assessed need. We will achieve this through support that is delivered to whole families, and practice that draws on a multi-agency approach and high quality commissioned services.
4.6 We recognise that young carers are always children with additional needs. They may also have complex needs or complex, chronic and/or acute needs. The City Corporation’s Thresholds of Needs guidance sets out how we will assess and define the level of need of all children and young people, including those with caring responsibilities.
5 Supporting transition
5.1 If a young carer is likely to have needs for care and/or support after the age of 18 years we will conduct an assessment to support the handover of those needs to our Adult Social Care team, who will support that person as they become an adult carer. Such as assessment will be carried out where the young carer has given consent to it, and where we are satisfied that it would be of significant benefit to that young carer.
5.2 We will support this process through our Transitions Forum. This will bring together practitioners from our Children and Families team and Adult Social Care, with other partners and agencies necessary to support the on-going needs of a carer.
5.3 The Transitions Forum is also responsible for identifying individuals in the City who should receive a Transitions Assessment, co-ordinating which partners need to be involved or consulted in that assessment, and implementing the plans set out to support young carers who are becoming adults.
6 Delivering for young carers
6.1 This strategy is not delivered in isolation. It is supported by our Children and Young People’s Plan, Early Help Strategy, and the City Corporation’s Thresholds guidance. The Early Help offer in the City of London is focussed on preventative work, a whole family approach and building social capital to provide networks of support and improved wellbeing.
6.2 This approach is underpinned by close joint working across children and adult teams, which includes the City Corporation’s joint protocol for safeguarding children and unborn children whose parents or carers have mental ill health or have other vulnerabilities.
6.3 Such joint working ensures a “think family” approach that drives a holistic view of needs and involves the whole family in the assessment process, including a carers’ assessment for any young carers.
6.4 We will support the emotional health of young carers through our jointly commissioned child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) support for carers and young carers on a case by case basis.
6.5 Our approach will be driven by the assessment we undertake and therefore individualised and tailored to needs. Commissioned services or other targeted services will be available to provide safe, quality support to those children and young people who continue to be affected by any caring role within their family. Such support may include short breaks, mentoring, support networks and/or personal budgets.
6.6 To facilitate access to services our renewed personal budgets and short breaks policies include young carers within their eligibility criteria. We are partnering with providers in neighbouring boroughs to make existing services available to young carers. To further expand the range of support offers and services for children and young people in need, including our young carers, we have arranged access to the London Borough of Hackney’s framework of providers from early 2016.
6.7 The delivery of support to young carers draws on a range of partners, led by the work of Children and Families team. We will also work closely with our youth services provider City Gateway, our maintained school, and adult social care services in the City to identify children and young people who are carers. We will also ensure that awareness is raised with partners, families, and other professionals through our work and that of the City and Hackney Children’s Safeguarding Board.
7 Implementation and oversight
7.1 Oversight of this strategy and its implementation will be led by the Children’s Executive Board, and reported to the City Corporation’s Safeguarding Sub Committee.
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