Following on from Carers Rights Day, we asked young carers in Wrexham about the challenges they are experiencing as a young carer.
WCD Young Carers believe all young carers are amazing and remind them of this if they forget. Their bespoke support includes fortnightly respite clubs for different age groups, trips and activities in the school holidays, one-to-one support during tough times, advocacy as well as awareness raising in schools/colleges and the local community.
You can find further information on the WCD Young Carers website.
Transcript
Young carer 1: Probably recognition. As much as a big difference is being made, and now a lot of people do know what young carers are, a lot of people still don’t, or a lot of people aren’t willing to recognise the difference between a young carer and just another child.
I think especially in schools it’s a really big issue because when people need to go out, or text their family, or when people need to miss school nobody really understands.
You get treated like everyone else, but that’s not the case because you don’t have the same responsibilities as everyone else.
Apart from that, I think maybe peers. It’s getting a bit better now where your peers kind of understand that you have a bit extra to do and you can’t go out and stuff like that, but I know that can really affect some people.
Especially some of the young carers that I’m friends with – they don’t really get the understanding from their friends when they can’t go and do stuff.
And maybe within organisations themselves – kind of the thought that people who seem to be doing more need more help.
Because I don’t feel like I do too much in comparison to a lot of people, but I’m still a young carer and I still need a lot of support, but I think people maybe seem to think that I don’t, because I don’t do as much as other people.
In comparison to the people who do loads and loads and loads, they think that person will need more support because they seem to be doing more, but I feel like there’s a lot more that goes on behind the curtains.
There’s a lot more that goes on in the background and I feel like nobody should not have the right, but be able to say how much support someone does or doesn’t need just because they are doing more or less than someone else.
Young carer 2: Many young carers can struggle with school work. They may put out that they’re perfectly fine but they do need a little bit of extra help at school.
It’s quite common for young carers to struggle to do homework, so we do get told off more about late homework, or not even completing it.
We also struggle to do things by ourselves, without worrying about family.
Young carer 3: Confidence – so a lot of our young carers struggle with self-esteem and confidence. And as much as young carers have helped so much to build that confidence back up, there is still a big part to play with them thinking they don’t fit in because they do something different.
There’s still a lot of ‘well you’re a young carer so you can’t do anything’. It’s more there’s a breach between adults and young carers.
We’re trying to fix that – and we’re doing amazing with that – but there is still going to be that big struggle of confidence and self-esteem.
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