With a mum who’d been sick since before she was born, Lanarkshire schoolgirl Katie Hughes was, at the age of just nine, responsible for preparing and cooking all evening meals.
When Katie was in Primary 5, her mum’s condition deteriorated and, by the time she’d reached high school, she’d be making repeated calls home every day to make sure her mum was coping without her.
And, on arriving home after classes, Katie would busy herself in the kitchen to make nutritious meals and ensure her mum was eating properly.
“I first came into contact with Action for Children when I was 10,” explained Katie, now a 16-year-old S5 pupil at Cardinal Newman High School.
“I remember my mum told me I was starting this new group and I didn’t want to go because it was taking me away from her.”
Although shy and nervous at first, the caring team at charity Action for Children soon helped Katie to settle.
“On the first day, I remember the young carers all sat down in a circle. We introduced ourselves and talked about who we cared for,” she said.
“I made friends with the other young carers there and, even though some of them have moved on, we’re still in touch. It was really helpful to be around other young people who were going through the same thing as me, because there wasn’t really anyone in school I could talk to about it.
“At that time in my life, I had never met someone like me who had a caring role. It was the first time I met other people my age who were doing the same stuff as me. I was going, knowing it wasn’t just me going through it and it helped knowing I had other people to talk to who understood. Jackie and Josh were two of my closest friends. They were in my first group and we were all together for a few years. They really helped me a lot.”
Had she not had Action for Children at her back when she started secondary school, Katie, of Uddingston, says she’d have felt isolated.
“Going along to Young Carers helped take that worry away, and the Action for Children staff would come into the school to help,” she said.
“I’m planning on staying on until the end of S6. I’m doing three Highers – drama, history and English – and two Nat 5s: child care and maths. I want to work for Action for Children Young Carers now because of how much they’ve helped me.
“I’ve thought about being a nursery teacher at some point, so I’m going to do a modern apprenticeship in nursery teaching. That’ll give me a qualification and I can, hopefully, start working with Action for Children Young Carers.”
With the help of having the discipline of exercising the family’s two-year-old Border Collie, Bran, Katie has seen an improvement in her mum’s health.
“She started working again a few weeks ago, so I’m still getting used to it,” she said.
“If I see her tired, I start to worry her health is declining again, but it’s just a case of her building up her energy again.”
Of Action for Children, Katie said: “It was last year when it was getting close to me leaving the programme that I started thinking about how much they had helped me. I want to help other kids whose parents have an illness, too.”
As part of its Young Carers Awareness Day activities, Carers Trust Scotland is calling for more support for young carers after a new survey finds many feeling stressed, lonely and worried.
More than one in five (22 per cent) of young carers and young adult carers who responded said they feel unable to take a break from caring and 31 per cent don’t get enough rest or time for themselves.
More than half (54 per cent) of young carers and young adult carers said the amount of time they spend caring per week had increased in the past year.
At least a third of respondents said their caring role resulted in them either ‘always’ or ‘usually’ feeling ‘worried,’ ‘lonely’ or ‘stressed.’
Forty seven per cent of the young carers and young adult carers surveyed said they ‘never’ or ‘not often’ received support from their school, college or university in balancing studies with their caring role.
Findings from a new Carers Trust survey reveal how an alarming lack of support, coupled with a dramatic rise in time spent caring, is leaving many young carers across Scotland feeling ‘lonely’, ‘exhausted’, ‘worried’, ‘burned out’ and ‘stressed’.
The findings were published to mark Young Carers Action Day, an annual event led and organised by Carers Trust to raise awareness of young carers and the challenges they face.
Carers Trust Scotland is now calling on Scottish Government to introduce a right to access the regular breaks they need to support positive wellbeing, reduce social isolation, and live a fulfilled life alongside caring.
The organisation also wants closer monitoring of how local authorities are meeting statutory duties to identify and support young carers, and is calling for education providers to take a more integrated and collaborative approach to support.
Even before coronavirus, pressures on the health and social care services meant increasing levels of caring responsibilities were falling too heavily on young carers’ shoulders.
The impact of this overwhelming burden of responsibility was made clear in many of the written responses to the survey.
One young carer said: “I’m more stressed and anxious and I just feel like I need a break”.
Another said: “It’s too much pressure and responsibility for something I didn’t choose.”
And a third young carer revealed: “It affected my friendships as they didn’t understand why they couldn’t come inside the house.”
Many essential services for those being cared for by young carers were closed because of lockdown. That left young carers and young adult carers to take on even further caring responsibilities.
Responding to the survey findings, Carers Trust’s CEO, Kirsty McHugh, said: “These stark findings underline the plight of young carers. Too many are left unsupported, struggling to access the services they need with knock-on effects to their education, mental health and well-being.
“We need more investment in social care generally and local care organisations specifically to relieve young carers of the overwhelming pressure so many are under. In addition, the NHS must ensure its mental health services prioritise young carer support. Otherwise young carers will continue to be left alone to cope with complex problems and responsibilities that would overwhelm most adults, let alone young people.”
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