Speak Up: Sheffield Young Carers

Through their Speak Up small grants programme, Healthwatch Sheffield worked with Sheffield Young Carers and their Young Carer Action Group to explore the experiences of young carers and cared-for parents when accessing health services.

The grants programme offers funding and partnership work for local voluntary, community, and not-for-profit organisations. The purpose is to reach out to more people across the city, and hear what matters to them in relation to health and social care.

Key findings:

• There is a lack of identification of young carers by professionals, despite families having long-term contact with services
• There is commonly a fear and distrust of services, with young people and parents worrying that intervention might lead to them being separated from their families or other consequences
• Communication and relationship building with professionals is hugely important
• Parents and young carers need a whole-family approach; focusing just on the individual patient fails to recognise the impact that illness, disability, or substance misuse has on the wider household.

Resources to support young carers:

The Young Carer Action Group worked together to create a series of resources that could be used in health and care settings. They felt these could be effective in identifying other young people in caring roles:

• 'Do you help someone at home?' poster - for young carers to recognise their own role
• 'Who else supports this patient?' flowchart - for professionals to identify and support young carers more confidently

The findings from this report have been shared with local providers of both children's and adults' services, and the resources have been distributed to healthcare settings so they can start being used to help identify young carers at an earlier stage.