Introduction
Buckinghamshire Council is creating a new All-Age Carers Strategy.
This is a document to describe how professionals will work together to provide good support to carers, including young carers.
Carers are people who care for a family member or friend who cannot cope without their support and are not paid for doing this.
The adults involved in making this document know that it is essential to listen to young carers’ experiences, feedback and ideas to work out how they can best be supported. Below, you can read about how this is being achieved.
Ensuring young carers’ voices are heard
- Two young carers have been head-hunted from other youth voice projects to act as Young Carer Ambassadors in this project.
Their names are Hannah and Ricardo. - Hannah and Ricardo are being supported by the Youth Voice Bucks team to meet regularly with the person at Buckinghamshire Council who is leading on developing the new strategy – Jo.
Together, they have discussed the project, their backgrounds, and how young carers’ voices can best be listened to and woven in to the new strategy. - Hannah and Ricardo helped to design a session plan for Jo to deliver in Young Carers groups, and these sessions were carried out by Jo and her team.
- Hannah and a staff member from Carers Bucks hosted a stall at the Bucks Youth Summit 2024 to speak to young carers directly about support available to them.
- Jo wrote up what the young carers said into notes and shared these back to the young people that took part via their teachers.
- In an online meeting, Jo and the Young Carer Ambassadors discussed the key messages shared by young people, and together discussed how these messages can be incorporated into the new strategy. Hannah and Ricardo’s own experience will be embedded into the new strategy too.
- Through meetings and emails with Jo, Hannah and Ricardo are being regularly updated on project progress.
View the notes from the Youth Engagement Sessions as a PDF [279KB]
My name is Jo Collins and I work for Buckinghamshire Council.
I am currently working to develop a strategy to make sure that good support is available to carers of all ages.
Young people are our future and it is so important that your views and experiences are heard to find better ways of supporting you as young carers. It is also important that we understand what is working well for you so we can build on this.
Over the past few months I have met with many wonderful young carers and really value the experiences that have been shared, the strength of all young people carrying out a caring role is inspiring and I look forward to seeing the positive impact this work will have on young carers across Buckinghamshire.
Hello, my name is Ricardo and I am a young adult carer. I am about to go to study at Politics and International Relations at the University of Exeter.
I have lived in the north of Buckinghamshire for 12 years and I have been a young carer / young adult carer for that whole time.
Some of my hobbies include: cooking, travel and football.
I believe that youth voice projects such as this one are crucial. They provide young people who may not regularly get their opinions listened to, including disadvantaged young people such as Young Carers who are often overlooked, a chance to provide feedback and opinions to help shape the support and environment around them. This makes a positive impact, not only to their lives, but for other young people in the future.
I hope that this strategy will be able to further support Young Adult Carers in the areas where it is needed the most.
Next steps
- Jo is writing up the notes from the sessions that Hannah and Ricardo helped to design. These will be shared with the schools / teachers in September.
- These messages from young people, and further input from Hannah and Ricardo, will be added to the strategy document.
- Hannah and Ricardo will write an introduction, called a “Foreword” for the new strategy. This will introduce themselves and explain how young carers voices have been listened to and acted on in the new strategy.
- You can keep an eye on this webpage, which will be updated as the project progresses!
Carers Survey
Jo and her team are collecting input for the Carers Strategy in lots of different ways.
As well as the youth voice actions described above, a carers survey for the strategy is now live. This survey will help Jo and her team understand what is important for carers. Although the survey is set up for adult carers, it is appropriate for young adult carers too.
Go to the Carers Strategy Survey
If you are a young adult carer, or an adult carer, please feel free to answer the survey!
The survey closes on Sunday 18 August 2024.
