A leading care coalition urges the Government to tighten procedures for children caring for adults

An influential partnership of charities supporting social and family care are urging an end to the conflict concerning which service agencies should be supporting young carers and their families.

The Family Policy Alliance (consisting of Parentline Plus, Family Welfare Association and the Family Rights Group) has joined forces with The Children's Society, The Princess Royal Trust for Carers and the Disabled Parents Network in calling for children's and adult agencies to work together in reducing the numbers of child and teenage carers.

A 'young carer' is defined as a child under the age of 18 who provides care at a level which would normally be expected of an adult.

The 2001 census estimates that there are currently 175,000 young carers in the UK with some 13,000 providing more care than a full-time job (50+ hours).

Some young carers are as young as seven and according to social workers are providing an inappropriately high level of practical and emotional care. This can include personal care for a relative during the night or not able to leave a relative alone in the house for fear that they might overdose or self-harm.

Alex Fox, Head of Young Carers Development at The Princess Royal Trust for Carers, said:

"We know that many children do not come forward because neither they or their families have been offered support. Many may be frightened of the consequences in asking for help. The majority of young carers don't even tell their teachers or friends. Yet caring can have a dramatic effect on young lives. Children's health is often severely affected by a lack of sleep, constant worrying and the challenges of providing physical care."

He continued: "Almost a third of young carers at secondary school have serious learning problems because they may have missed days off in order to care for a relative, so some are leaving without any formal qualifications. In addition some face isolation, loneliness and bullying at school."

Government guidance states that families should not have to wait until their children are in crisis before parents get support. But this guidance is often ignored as the following case involving 'Jamie' highlights.

All names in the following case study have been changed to protect identity. Interviewees are available.

Jamie's mum Jackie had a stroke and lost mobility. Despite being only 13 Jamie regularly helped his mum to the toilet each night. This provision of intimate care resulted in a deteriorating parent-child relationship, tiredness and behavioural difficulties in school. The intervention needed to prevent Jamie’s excessive caring role was identified as night-support for Jackie but Jackie did not qualify for night-support from Adults’ Services. Meanwhile, Children’s Services felt they could not fund night-support for an adult. Despite both services agreeing that Jamie was a 'child in need', the family’s situation was not addressed and was alleviated only with Jackie’s partial recovery some months later.

Healthcare professionals and charities say that 'Jamie's' case is not unique.

Indeed so strong is the call to ensure that these families receive the support they are entitled to that 105 MPs supported an Early Day Motion (EDM 316) urging service-providers to work together in ensuring that disabled or vulnerable parent/guardians received adequate support from adult and children’s services rather than relying on their offspring for care.

With the Family Policy Alliance adding its weight to these calls, the next move will be to ask the Government to address the current loopholes in the Every Child Matters care policies.

Jan Fry, Director of External Relations of Parentline Plus explained: “We welcome the Government's move to bringing children’s services closer together with the formation of children’s trusts. We believe this will mean better communication and partnership working across children’s services. But the key to preventing young carers from becoming children “in need" lies in children's trusts and adult services jointly assessing these young people and their families. Our concern is that the gains from the Every Child Matters policy agenda could get lost because of widening gaps between children’s and adult services.”

Helen Dent, Chief Executive of Family Welfare Association added: “We believe that in an ideal world no child would be compelled to take on caring roles which were more suited for adults. Neither the child nor the cared-for chose this situation yet time and time again disabled parents tell us that they find themselves in a Catch 22 situation in that their requests for the support they need are ignored until lack of support leads to their children being labelled ‘in need’ or even ‘at risk’.”

To tackle this the coalition of the Family Policy Alliance is calling on Government to ensure that vulnerable adults are not forced to rely on the care of a child. Recommendations include urging:

• All adults’ services ask their clients if they have children and what support they need in their parenting role
• Direct payments (including joint-funded packages across health and different divisions of social services) are promoted for disabled adults to purchase assistance with parenting.

John Keep, Chair of the Disabled Parents Network said: “A handful of local authorities have issued agreed guidance for frontline professionals working with children and specialist adult services. This costs nothing but can be the difference between a disabled parent being supported to be the parent they want to be and an individual being forced to rely on their children for help.”

An example of protocol can be found on our YC Net Professionals Pages.

Local Authorities can adopt the protocol to provide simple guidance on joint working to frontline professionals. The coalition is keen to work with as many agencies as possible to strengthen the call. For further information, they can contact Alex Fox, The Princess Royal Trust for Carers afox@carers.org

What is The Family Policy Alliance?

The Family Policy Alliance is a coalition of three organisations: Family Rights Group, Family Welfare Association and Parentline Plus who have extensive experience of providing a range of support services to families.

The partnership works together to help develop of the Government’s family support policies.

Each organisation provides parent and carer services. They also lobby policy change and campaign for greater status for unpaid or family carers.

The partnership demonstrates an understanding, based on hard facts, of the challenges facing parents. Because of the high level of dedicated advocacy, the Alliance can recommend practical and evidence-based solutions.