Evaluation of the Young Carers Program

Through the Young Carers (YC) Program, Carers WA deliver interventions to support young people who provide unpaid care to a family member or friend living with disability and/or serious illness.

This unique youth-centric service focuses on improving the social and emotional wellbeing of young people who support a family member living with disability, mental health challenges, chronic health conditions or terminal illness, substance dependency or who is frail due to age. Program clients can access youth needs assessments and peer supports in schools, in addition to Carer Gateway supports (which are usually available to adults only).

The Centre for Social Impact at The University of Western Australia (CSI UWA) was commissioned to evaluate the service, with positive outcomes and recommendations provided below.

Improving the wellbeing of young carers

The YC Program proved to be effective for young carers in:

  1. increasing self-awareness
  2. improving wellbeing and quality of life
  3. increasing parents’ awareness
  4. improving family relationships
  5. increasing school engagement

From a client perspective, the YC Program was at times very influential to their life:

“I don't think I would be where I am right now in my caring role without Young Carers…they've had a huge impact on my caring role and getting the help that I needed.”

Having been established in response to lack of services for YCs, the YC Program has, and continues to, support young carers with widely varying circumstances and needs.

Although intended to be an early-intervention program, the prevalence of unmet basic needs amongst young carers meant that YC Program service provision was often providing basic necessities before assisting the young carers mentally, emotionally, and socially.

Despite this unfortunate context, the YC Program has demonstrated positive outcomes, suggesting that it is serving the YC community as intended.

Widespread recognition is needed to support young carers within WA.

Recommendations

Recommendations arising from this evaluation include:

  • increased advocacy of YCs at the systems level including the WA Parliament and Department of Education
  • increased advocacy for services of YC aged under 14
  • trauma-informed training for YC staff
  • additional resourcing for staff to cover both metropolitan and regional areas of WA