To receive a presentation from Sarah Collin, Project Manager at Family Action Carers.

Sarah Collin, Project Manager at Family Action Carers, gave a presentation to the forum about the work that the organisation undertook as a commissioned service from the local authority.

Family Action was a national organisation which had a range of projects including children and family services across the entire country. The Young Carer’s service worked hard to ensure that the needs of families were fully understood. A young carer was defined by someone under the age of 18 who helped to look after someone at home in their family who was ill, disabled, or misused drugs or alcohol. Data from the 2011 Census indicated that there were 177,000 young carers in the UK, though this data may be unreliable as most families wouldn’t recognises the label of carer. Furthermore, children wouldn’t be filling out the census which meant they would not have the opportunity to self-identify.

Further research had found that one in five school-aged children took on a caring role at home. In a borough the size of Windsor and Maidenhead, this would equate to around 6000 children.

The UK was a global leader in terms of recognising young carers and offering support. Rights were given to young carers and their families under the Children and Families Act 2014, the Care Act 2014, the Health and Care Act 2022 and the Equality Act 2010. With regards to the role of local authorities, the Children and Families Act 2014 stated that local authorities must identify young carers in their area and access and identify the support needs of young carers.

RBWM had a carer’s needs steering group, which had members from Optalis, NHS Frimley, NHS Berkshire Foundation Trust and Achieving for Children among others. This group met bi-monthly to talk through the needs of carers within the borough.

Family Action had three main key performance indicators (KPIs) that were reported back to the local authority every quarter – the young carer friendly community, young carer assessment and the offer of support. In terms of the assessment stage, Family Action had an open-door referral route which means that young people were able to self-refer, as well as any agency, educational provider or healthcare organisation being able to refer.

Assessment itself was a two-stage process. The first stage was to meet with the family in order to recognise the carer’s role and establish what the young carer was doing and how they were providing practical care. The second stage was to look at the impact that this had on the young carer themselves in terms of physical and emotional health, education and finances.

After the assessment was complete, Family Action created a support action plan based on the carer’s role and the impact this had on their lives. Post-assessment, young carers were offered six one-to-one sessions which gave them the space to explore what being a young carer meant.

The Chair thanked Sarah for the presentation and stated her surprise that there may be up to 6,000 young carers in RBWM but was reassured to hear the ways in which they were being supported.

Lisa Hughes thanked Sarah and asked if there were any statistics on the number of young carers that had been identified in the borough.

Sarah Collin explained that Family Action’s target was to have three referrals per calendar month, but this was normally exceeded by double. Looking back through their database, Family Action had around 300 young carers registered. There were many barriers in place which prevented young carers being referred to the service, one of which was parental consent.

Lisa Hughes stated that it would be important to include the needs of young carers in the Children and Young Person’s strategy which was being developed as part of the Integrated Health and Care Partnership between NHS Frimley and RBWM, and she would bring this up as she was part of the task and transition team.