Young carers projects share £1m grant

A £1m voluntary sector grant has been divided between 20 projects helping young carers across England. The Department for Children, Schools and Families’ (DCSF) Innovation Fund is designed to help young carers projects focus on providing improvements and solutions to young carers’ lives.

Every region in England has at least one funded project and the DCSF predicts it will benefit more than 1,450 young carers and their families. Two of the grants are pilot schemes to support those who may be looking after relatives in a hospice.

Children’s minister Delyth Morgan said: “We want the projects to consider how they can address the needs of the whole family to ensure young people can enjoy their childhood without excessive or inappropriate caring responsibilities.”

The successful projects were selected by the National Young Carers Coalition. Applicants had to prove they could provide sustainable changes for young carers and clear plans for evaluating the success of their intervention.

They were also required to demonstrate that through their intervention young carers’ responsibilities had lessened and that there were demonstrable long-term family benefits.

One of the chosen projects was Harrow Carers Centre in north west London. Project manager Deborah Pangemanan said the funding will go towards expanding the service to reach more young people who act as carers.

She said: “At the moment we’re not providing the support we want so this will mean that we can.

“We want to help young carers build life skills, looking at employment and further education as well as helping them with their CV, interviewing skills and increasing their confidence.”