ROdown Blog
Young carers on Reach Out
The Reach Out crew invited me to swing by ROdown to share with you our plans to make Reach Out more accessible and relevant for different groups of young people – one of which include young carers.
Young carers include young people who help care for someone experiencing an illness, a disability, mental health issue, and/or alcohol or other drug related problems. The person they care for might be a sibling, parent, grandparent, other relative or a friend or partner. There are at least 380,000 young carers in Australia (along with many more who may not realise they are carers).
Young carers often take on extra responsibilities, such as helping with medications, booking doctors appointments, cooking for the family (and helping to cook), cleaning the house and garden and providing emotional support by helping the person they care for to feel ok when they are sick.
Many consider their role to be a rewarding one, and for some, it has enabled them to develop valuable skills. However as a result of taking on these responsibilities, young carers sometimes aren’t able to keep up with things like school/uni, work, or even hanging out with friends. As a result, young carers themselves can be at greater risk of experiencing mental health problems.
It’s therefore really important that young carers know that they are not alone, and are able to access support when they need it. So we’ll be working on different ways to promote the positive mental health and wellbeing of this group here at Reach Out – and would love your ideas about how we can do this!
As some of you may already know, we’ve been gathering info about this topic for some time. In fact, some of you may have even participated in the ROtreat forum on this topic last month, or read (and participated in) the research Michelle conducted earlier this year about the role of technology in improving the mental health of young carers. We’ll be taking the key recommendations from these forward – so thank you again to everybody who’s been involved so far.
Some of the general ideas that we’ve been exploring so far include:
- New stories and fact sheets (as well as updating older ones)
- Providing a space within the ROtreat forums for young carers to connect with one another
- Having guest bloggers who are experts on different issues affecting young carers (this might include young carers themselves and the people who specialise in working with them)
- Targeted marketing/awareness campaigns
We’re especially keen to develop multimedia content (e.g. short videos, podcasts etc.) too…
So, what are some potential topics or ideas for content that you think would be useful for young carers (or will help raise awareness of young carers)?
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2 Comments
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Antria
over 2 years ago
Reply ReportI would like to see content created around a bunch of issues for young people who have experiences 'parentification' type issues. So YP who have had these experiences might face different issues when approaching life transitions, making friends with people their own age, 'rebelling' in different way to other young people and even different relationship issues.
Would also be good to see resources on self care (like Bella said). Even stuff like getting out and having fun times that do not require one to be 'responsible', 'mature' or 'caring', necessarily.
Bella.
over 2 years ago
Reply ReportI think that the fundamental most important thing to remember when you are a carers is that YOU come first.