Young Carers

Contemporary Issues Young Carers and the psychosocial impact on their well-being: and the wider social impact of the role of young carers. To explore the complexities of young carers a definition must be offered. However, endeavours to find a clear definition of the term ‘Young Carer’ is difficult, due to the complexity and diversity surrounding the function. An encompassing definition of a young carer is ‘_ children and young persons under 18 who provide, or intend_ _ to provide, care, assistance or support to another family member_ They _carry out, often on a regular basis significant or substantial _ _caring tasks and assumes a level of responsibility, which would _ usually be associated with an_ adult'._ (Becker, 2000 cited in Aldridge & Becker, 2003, p. xiii) Cree (2003) suggests that, if defining a young carer is complicated, then it is similarly, complicated to make statements about children’s general well-being and social standing. The National Statistics Office (NSO) census of 2001, for the first time gathered information about the provision of unpaid care givers. Just over 1% of children aged between 5 and 15 years provided unpaid care, this equates to 114,000 children. 9,000 children which represent 8% of young carers were identified as providing care for 50 hours or more a week. Aldridge (2007) indicates this figure rises to 175,000 when all children aged 18 and below are identified. Frank (2002) however, stressed for reasons to be discussed further in this essay, that the number of young carers may be much greater. The average age of a young carer is 12 years old, 54% of carers live in lone parent families and 12% of carers, care for more than one person with 25% receiving no other professional support except for that from young carer’s projects (Deaden & Becker 2004). The projects such as The Princess Royal Trust for Carers, The Children’s Society and Carers UK are generally funded through Local Authorities. The