Support for more vulnerable young carers

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Young Carers 

A Young Carer is child or young person aged 5 - 18 years old, who has
significant caring role for another person who suffers from physical disability, mental health problems, substance misuse or any other debilitating or long term illness. A Young Carer becomes vulnerable when their caring role is having a big impact on their life and life chances including their education, social life and leisure time and health and well-being. 


Support Services and Projects for Young Carers

There are a range of support services in Westminster for Young Carers that they can access regardless of the level of their caring responsibilities.

These include:

DreamArts Carers Express Project:

A holiday time group project for Young Carers aged 12 - 18 years, running until summer 2018. This project offers a range of creative and therapeutic activities including drama and sculpture that enable the Young Carers to share their stories, learn from and spend time with other young carers and build confidence and self-esteem. They are also being supported with their personal development and resilience. 

Email: janine@dreamarts.org.uk
Web: www.dreamarts.org.uk
Twitter: @DreamArtsLondon
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DreamArtsLondonWestminster

Family Lives - Young Carer Project

Family Lives - Young Carer Project 

Offers 1:1 personal support from a Young Person’s Worker for young carers aged 10 - 15 years. Support is focused on the young carers well-being increasing the young carer’s confidence and self-esteem, reducing feelings of isolation enabling them to be confident in accessing support and providing them with information on support and services available to them.Family Lives also offer a social group for all young people aged 10 - 15 in the City (including young carers) at the Portman Children’s Centre. 
If you would like to refer a young person please email me for referral form:
roxanneh@familylives.org.uk or call 07921 456 656 to discuss.

Honeypot

Offer respite residentials to junior young carers (under 12) focused on opportunities for the child to do activities that they may not get the opportunity to take part in regularly because of their caring responsibilities such as cooking, arts and crafts and outdoor play. Referrals are made through Family Services (see details of how to refer to Family Services below) email or see the website www.honeypot.org.uk for more details.

Early Help Services

Support is also available for more vulnerable Young Carers in Early Help Services:

Young carers are a target group for Westminster Early Help Services and the Access Team will be able to advise whether the young carer meets the thresholds for Early Help Support, or more statutory services, or help signpost to other services.
Contact the Access team via 020 7641 4000 or register on this site and sign in
to gain access to the MARF (Multi Agency Referral Form).

 
If you are a Young Carer or are working with or know of a Young Carer that is vulnerable and need support please make a referral to Early Help Services.
Alternatively, if the case requires an immediate response or you could just call
the Access Team for a case discussion before submitting the referral
020 7641 4000.

OurTime

Is a workshop based project, offering support to children and young people whose parents are suffering/affected by parental mental health. Kidstime is for all the family-parents, carers, children and young people from 4 -18 years.

The workshops:
• Help children and young adults make sense of what has happened to their parents in a safe and understandable way.
• Help parents to manage better when stressed by mental health problems.
• Help families talk together so that they can find better solutions.
• Help children and young people have fun together (through drama and creative activities) and with their parents, while learning to cope with pressures and grow emotionally.
Workshops will be on last Wed of the month during term time term from 5 - 7pm Venue TBC
Email: mariya.zlatinova@family-action.org.uk or
Web: https://ourtime.org.uk

The Renaissance Foundation

The Renaissance Foundation offer a 3 year programme for Young Carers that has been specifically designed to provide the three groups with the emotional and practical support they need to enhance their life prospects.

Their first objective is to strengthen their resilience, which is achieved through inspirational visits to local and foreign institutions that broaden horizons, and meetings with role models that increase their confidence and ‘can-do’ attitude.

The second objective is to develop the young people’s practical skills and life tools such as critical thinking and public speaking, which is done through team-building workshops and opportunities to speak at social events.

Finally, they aim to encourage our young people to develop their career prospects and broaden their perspective of work. That is done through careers visits and employability sessions at our corporate partner organisations such as KPMG, CNN or Youtube. They also place a huge emphasis on maturing their digital and social media skills, as experience can open a host of vocational opportunities. 
http://www.renaissance-foundation.com/aboutus/

Related Links

  1. Dreamarts
  2. Honeypot
  3. Renaissance Foundation
  4. Ourtime formerly KidsTime

Related Advice

  1. Early Help
  2. Social Services and Family Support

Page last reviewed: 22/02/2024

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