This Carers Week, following our trip to meet the Prime Minister last year, our brilliant Patron Paul Blomfield MP helped us to organise a meeting in Parliament for young carers’ organisations from all over the country. On 12 June, we came together to meet with MPs and to agree actions to improve support for young carers all over the UK.
Following the meeting, Paul said,
“Sheffield Young Carers does a brilliant job supporting inspirational young people who juggle caring responsibilities with education and everything else in their lives. They’re also giving young carers a voice on how they could be supported better. I’m pleased to help them take that voice to Parliament and lead national action on the issue.
“I led a debate in Parliament in February, but more needs to be done by the Government. So we decided to bring young carers groups together to discuss how we can raise the profile of young carers and persuade the Government to help. It was a great meeting, confirming that the sort of issues we’ve been raising are shared across the UK. But we heard some new things too and have agreed an action plan.”
Our Deputy Manager Laura Selby said,
“It was exciting to have so many people at the meeting, both MPs and young carers’ services from across the country, who are working to make young carers’ lives better. We heard some great examples of what other groups are doing and we discussed how we’re going to come together to build a national voice for young carers.”
Back here in Sheffield, our Action Group works closely with statutory services, voluntary and community organisations, and local councillors and MPs to provide a clear voice for young carers and to help identify more young carers just like them. They also help to improve the quality and availability of support for young carers across the city.
We’re all really excited about starting to link with other groups across the UK to build our national campaign voice on issues such as the need for more training to help medical professionals to identify young carers and encouraging more schools to provide targeted support. We couldn’t do any of this without the hard work and commitment of our Action Group - they are just amazing!!
