Leeds Young Carers

More Information

Who is a young carer?

A young carer is a child or young person under the age of 18 who looks after or helps to look after someone who has an illness, learning or physical disability, experiences mental ill health or has a difficulty with drugs or alcohol. It might be a mum or dad, grandparent, brother or sister or a close relative or friend.

A young carer usually takes on practical and/or emotional caring tasks that would normally be expected of an adult. This means doing things like cooking, cleaning, shopping, giving medication or talking and helping when the person they care for is upset.

Caring tasks can look very different, a young carer might be doing different things than mentioned above, but that doesn’t mean that they are not a young carer.

How are young carers supported in Leeds?

Looking after someone can sometimes take up a lot of time and it can be very difficult to cope with everything. Going to school, meeting up with friends and the young carer doing the things they enjoy can be hard for them to fit in.

The first service or professional a young carer or family member speaks to about the care they are providing has the responsibility to explore this further and find out what the family feel they need.

Services in the area work with children, young people and their families to find out the best way to get support. It could be from a range of services including school or our Young Carers Support Service.

In order to be able to understand a child's, young persons and families situation better a professional will complete a tool called “A Day in the Life of….” brief assessment.

The important thing is that the child, young person and family have been able to fully talk about what is happening for them, including what is going well, what they are finding difficult and get support with understanding which service is best placed to support them and how to access it.

What we do

Our Leeds Young Carers Support Service can help in three main ways:

1) Provide Information and Advice: We are here to provide information and advice to young carers, their families, and practitioners.

2) Awareness Raising and Training Opportunities: Our Community Engagement Practitioners deliver practice development and training opportunities to all children, family and adult services in Leeds.

The Practice Development Sessions will provide an opportunity to develop knowledge, increase confidence and improve the identification and support for young carers and their families. We have a series of online practice development sessions that any practitioner can individually book on to. Requests for a team or service specific practice development session can also be made. The community engagement practitioner will work with you to help identify training needs and develop a bespoke programme of support.

The We are Young Carer Friendly Leeds programme, is an offer to all settings in Leeds working with children and young people, aged 5-18. Our Community Engagement Practitioners provide a bespoke package of information, resources and training, which enables settings to review their current young carer identification and support mechanisms, and establish a robust action plan to improve outcomes for children and young people. The programme was written with our LEAP participation group, and ensures among other things, that settings have a Designated Lead for Young Carers and staff are trained and skilled to be able to identify, support and appropriately refer young carers in Leeds.

3) Specialist Support – Working directly with you and your family

If the type of care a child or young person provides is impacting a lot on what they can do and how they feel, a referral to our service may be the right type of support. A Young Carers Practitioner would complete a Young Carers Needs assessment with the family to explore ways to reduce the level of care the child or young person is providing and ensure the cared for person has the right care and support in place. To make a referral please complete "A day in the life of…" and "Understanding me and my family" found in our downloads section below. Please refer to the "No Wrong Door for young carers" document – Leeds has a graduated response to supporting young carers and recognises that the needs of young carers and their families can sometimes be met by universal and targeted services. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you require further information, advice and guidance.