Support for young carers
Many young people provide care for another person. This can make you feel like you're missing out on other opportunities as you spend time and energy caring for family members who are unwell or disabled.
As a young carer you might help with:
- Practical tasks like cooking, housework and shopping
- Physical tasks, like getting out of bed and personal care, such as helping someone get washed or dressed
- Giving medicine
- Looking after brothers and sisters.
Sometimes young carers suffer from anxiety and exhaustion because of the pressures of taking on adult responsibilities.
Young carers can also face extra pressures and struggle to look after themselves due to the responsibility of being a carer.
It's important to take the time to look after your own wellbeing.
Here are some tools and organisations that can give you further information and help you take care of yourself.
This guidance from the Children's Society will help you think about and develop some useful ways of coping and find out where you can get help. It helps you to explore your caring role and what you feel is good and not so good about it.
This booklet will help you make sure that you get the practical and emotional support you need. It supports you to think about who else can help you deal with the challenges you face – the answer to this will be different for everyone, so there are some tools you can use to work things out for you.
This guide is to help make sense of caring for someone with a mental illness and identify any help you may need and how to get it.