Young Adult Carer Support Service
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- Lead organisation
Durham County Council
- Project contact
Rachael Mawston
07775 555063
We are delivering a bespoke Young Adult Carer Support service for carers aged 16-24 years, during key times of transition into adulthood, such as moves into further education, training, employment and moving out of the family home to live independently.
We are co-producing a Transition Assessment with young adult carers to ensure it is reflective of their needs and experiences during this life period. The ‘Young Adult Carers Assessment’ will inform a package of support which is tailored to the young adult carer and their family’s specific needs and will last up to 6 months.
Support is delivered through one-to-one sessions with all appropriate family members (as required); through home visits, school, college or university visits, telephone support and small peer support sessions with other local young adult carers, experiencing similar caring roles. A ‘whole family’ approach has been adopted with a view to the reach and impact of this service extending beyond the young adult carer referred.
Additionally, we are planning age-appropriate focused events and support groups to provide peer support and learning. We are connecting and building relationships with local partners such as North East Raising Aspirations Partnership (NERAP), DurhamWorks and other employability services as well as regional colleges and universities to support us in providing additionality to this support offer.
The project will deliver training/awareness sessions to key partners and organisations who are likely to engage with young adult carers to improve early identification of young adult carers. Support to access adult services will also be provided.
- Partners
Family Action (The Bridge Young Carers Service)
- Project duration
July 2023 – July 2025
- Key beneficiaries
Young Adult Carers aged 16-24 years
Young Adult Carer Support Service
Why we started this initiative
During 2022/23, Durham County Council undertook and completed a strategic review of our support offer for all unpaid carers.
Following engagement and consultation with young carers and young adult carers, it was clear this cohort required and wanted bespoke support that helped them reach their aspirations and goals, and that they were supported to ensure their caring role(s) did not impact on their future.
Our goals
• A reduction in the impact of caring.
• Better awareness of support available and have the skills to be able to access this independently.
• Increased access to education, training and employment opportunities; leading to higher aspirations and goals for the future.
• Increased access to leisure time, facilities and peer networks including access to the Carers Card and Carers Breaks.
• Improved emotional wellbeing.
• Earlier identification of young adult carers in education, health, social care and community settings.
• Increased understanding of young adult carers needs and awareness of how to effectively support young adult carers.
How we’re implementing it
The service is connecting with social and healthcare providers, secondary schools, post-16 education providers, colleges, universities and employers to promote early identification and support of young adult carers across the county.
Through robust existing partnership arrangements, we are also providing young adult carers over the age of 18 information or support to access our adult carer support service (Durham County Carers Support), once targeted one to one support from our provision has concluded therefore supporting an effective transition.
Learnings
We have secured funding for a 2 year project to allow us time to build effective local relationships and improve our partnership working with communities and other stakeholders.
Our adult and young carer commissioned support services work in collaboration and have had joint working lunches to discuss how they can improve the transition process and offer choice of services to carers aged 18+.
Additionally, as this is a new service we are working closely with our providers, to continually evaluate, review and make changes to the project delivery as needed. Both Commissioners and Providers agreed at the start of the project that a flexible approach would be adopted to ensure we could shape and make changes to the service quickly if needed. Any amendments to service delivery are based on outcomes and what young adult carers and their families are telling us.
One challenge has been around the recruitment of staff who have the relevant skill set to support this cohort of carers, although this has now been resolved.
Raising awareness of the new service has been time consuming over the last 8 months, but we are now receiving referrals from a range of referrers across the health, social care and education sector.
We have started to receive very positive feedback from people using the service and have included an animation case study from one of the young people who have recently accessed the service.