Young Carers Project

A young carer is a child or young person who provides substantial unpaid care for a relative who has disabilities, long-term physical illnesses, mental health difficulties and/or drug or alcohol issues. We agree with our colleagues at Sheffield Young Carers that it is the right of every young carer to be recognised in their role and have the same opportunities as other children and young people of a similar age.

Learn Sheffield are working with Sheffield Young Carers to improve the identification of young carers and our ability to understand their outcomes. We believe that these two things will improve the support that can be provided to children and young people in the city and also enable us to better understand the barriers and challenges those young carers in our city face.

Click on the links below to find out more about our analysis of the problem and our current project.

Analysis Project

Project

In order to address these issues we are seeking, in the first phase of this project (in 2024/25) to ensure that:

  1. All Sheffield settings are capturing any identified young carers in their census return in January 2025.
  2. All Sheffield settings have a good understanding of how to identify and support young carers in their community.

We are working with Sheffield Young Carers, Sheffield City Council and Sheffield’s education settings to ensure that any identified young carers are included in both the city register and the census return of their setting. We will develop guidance to support this during the autumn of 2024.

In 2025 we will work with our partners to increase everyone’s understanding of how to identify and support young carers in Sheffield.