Young carers

Sometimes children in the family are required to take on additional caring responsibilities to help their disabled parent around the house. This might include physically helping to care for the parent, or taking on additional jobs in place of the parent such as grocery shopping or looking after younger siblings.

Many children will also become a main source of emotional support for the parent, who may either have emotional effects as a direct result of injury to the brain, or be struggling with the changes in life that the injury has brought. Seeing a parent emotionally distressed can be difficult enough for a child, and this might be harder if they are required to provide emotional support to help the parent.

Taking on these additional responsibilities may lead to the child having less time to socialise and enjoy the activities that they did prior to the parent’s injuries. This can result in feelings of being left out from their peers. Young carers may also struggle with things such as completing homework or engaging in after-school activities. As a result, their self esteem or sense of self worth might be affected, especially as peers have a large role to play in children developing a sense of self identity.

Children will not always speak up when they are having such difficulties, and they may start to experience problems at school if teachers are not aware of their caring role. They may feel as though they are not allowed to talk about their home life, and that doing so will seem as though they are complaining. It is therefore important to ensure that if there are young carers in the family, they are given the chance to regularly speak about how they are feeling with someone they trust, and are encouraged to seek support if they are struggling with their caring role.

Support can be accessed from the following carer’s organisations and schemes.

•  Carers Trust will be able to tell you about any young carer projects in your area. They also have a number of young carer services across the country.

• Childline – If you are a young person and would like to talk to someone in confidence Childline provides a confidential listening service.

• The Children’s Society has a number of projects to support young carers, families and professionals. 

• Barnados runs projects across the UK which support young carers and their families in a variety of ways.

• Some of Headway’s local services also run support groups and services specifically for young carers. Contact your local group or branch to find out if they have services you can access.

Some council authorities will also have local services for young carers.

The organisations listed on this page are provided for information purposes only. Their inclusion does not imply endorsement, recommendation, or approval by Headway. Users should make their own assessment of any organisation or service before engaging with them.