Building Friendships and Resilience: Erica Stevens’ Approach to Young Carer Support in Bridgend

Erica Stevens is a Young Carers Support Worker at Bridgend Carers Centre.

Our offer of support to young carers

The Young Carers Team within Bridgend Carers Centre works closely with the schools and colleges within the Bridgend County Borough to ensure young carers get the support they need.

We offer them one-to-one support in schools, trips and activities during half terms and summer holidays. We have four different groups for different age ranges: 5-9 year olds, 10-12 year olds, 13-17 year olds and 16 – 25 year olds.

We also have a peer mentoring group, which is a smaller group of roughly 10 young carers. This group is for people who may feel anxious attending the larger groups or, if they’ve only recently been referred to us and don’t know anyone.

These groups allow them to make friends and build their confidence in the hope that they make friends within this small group and feel more comfortable attending the larger groups in the future. The peer mentoring group that we run has been very successful with our young carers.

When we have a referral made to us by the local authority, school or the individual themselves, we go through all things that we offer, including the one-to-one support, activities and trips during half terms.

We ensure people realise how this works, including how to book onto trips. During this process we ask the guardians of the young carers, if they would like to be signed up to be contacted about the trips and activities and whether they would like to be added to a list for one-to-one support in school.

There is a small waiting list for this support and we make sure that they are aware of this. We would then organise this directly with the Young Carers Champions within their schools.

We also make young carers aware of the Young Carers ID card when they have been referred to us. We let them know the positives of having one and how to get one.

These groups have formed great friendships and allowed the young carers to realise that they are not alone

Support in school

As a team, we offer one-to-one sessions in schools for young carers, to give them a chance to talk to someone about their concerns, as they may not want to talk to a family member about them.

We do activities with them during these sessions, to get them to speak about their feelings more openly and discuss them. We guide them through mindfulness techniques and ways to cope with their feelings, as we understand the concerns that may relate to the loved ones that they care for.

The secondary schools in Bridgend have a Young Carers Champion, which is a staff member that young carers can go to for support.

Most schools also offer Young Carers Groups within school time. We realised, from feedback from our young carers at Bridgend Carers Centre, that schools are struggling to offer groups in schools, as the staff are busy with other commitments.

Therefore, we offered to organise them and do them ourselves, with no pressure on the staff to attend or organise them. This meant that the young carers were guaranteed a group once a month.

The young carers have said that these have been helpful, as they can see just how many young carers there are within their school. They can also identify young carers who never realised they were young carers.

These groups have formed great friendships and allowed the young carers to realise that they are not alone. Within these sessions, we organise craft activities, play board games, and provide snacks.

The Young Carers ID Card

We promote the Young Carer ID Card by encouraging our new referrals to apply for one with Bridgend County Borough Council. We also do assemblies within comprehensive schools in the borough and always mention accessing a Young Carers ID Card. We can help the families fill in the form and send them off.

We have had great feedback from them, as they offer the whole family a year’s membership with Halo (a local gym, swimming pool etc). It also helps young carers to pick up prescriptions for the people that they care for, which is great.