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A multi-year grant to the North Tyneside Carers’ Centre (NTCC) has contributed towards supporting 450 young carers in the last year. The charity received £30,000 over three years from the Wellesley Trust Fund at the Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland, towards their core costs including salaries and overheads.
NTCC provides practical and emotional support to 1,500 young and adult carers across North Tyneside. The work they do includes providing information and advice, advocacy, counselling and training.
The grant helped enable their work with young carers. Young carers are children and young people aged 5-18 who provide unpaid support to a family member because of illness, disability, mental health or substance misuse issues. From the last Census, there were estimated up to 7,000 young carers living in North Tyneside. However, the number is likely a lot higher, as research by the BBC and Nottingham University in 2018 identified 1 in 5 children as young carers.
Pete Barrett, Senior Programme Advisor at the Community Foundation said:
“North Tyneside Carers’ Centre provide a range of services that are crucial to supporting the emotional and wellbeing needs of young carers, as well as working to improve service delivery and identify individuals who are not yet accessing support.
“The grant has helped support the delivery of services, activities, and respite care that helps these children and young people retain a semblance of childhood. They can take the time to consider their own futures, which also helps them to be better able to care for their family members.”
Young carers often struggle at school as a result of their caring responsibilities. Many miss or cut short their school days to provide support to the person they are caring for and achieve significantly lower educational attainment at GCSE level as a result. This impacts on their confidence, self-esteem and future aspirations.
The young carers that NTCC work with experience many disadvantages as their caring responsibilities impact on their health, wellbeing, education and social and economic life chances.
Claire Easton, Chief Executive at North Tyneside Carers’ Centre said:
“The grant from the Wellesley Trust supported North Tyneside Carers’ Centre to deliver a range of interventions over three years to young carers to keep them safe, maintain their wellbeing, connect them with other children and young people in similar situations and have fun. It also helped us leverage additional funds to meet increased demand as we came through the pandemic – with many young carers struggling due to exacerbated caring responsibilities and increased levels of anxiety.”