With the agreement of the young person and their family anyone can refer a young person to Gloucestershire Young Carers – this could be the young person themselves, a member of the family, a family friend or a professional working with the family (eg. GPs, social workers, health workers, teachers, educational staff and community workers).
When referring you will be asked to identify the practical and/or emotional caring responsibilities undertaken by the child or young person and the impact those responsibilities are having upon at least one of the following:
• physical/mental health
• education
• emotional and behavioural development
• family and social/peer relationships.
Where caring responsibilities or impact on the child or young person are unclear, you will be asked to clarify.
Priority will be given to ‘primary’ young carers i.e. where there is no adult carer and to ‘secondary’ young carers who need to provide substantial support due to family circumstances.
Children and young people may not be eligible if:
• their caring responsibilities do not have an adverse impact on their physical/mental health, education, emotional or behavioural development
• care tasks are age appropriate and do not exceed what an ‘average’ child of their age would undertake (e.g. a teenager helping with some house work, walking to the local shop etc)
• they are living with a family member who is ill, disabled or misusing substances but are not providing care for that person, for themselves or for siblings.
• their caring responsibilities are due to parenting issues or neglect(e.g caring for siblings because parents are working or inattentive)
• there is no parental consent and the young carer is under 18 years of age.
Please click here for a copy of GYC Eligibility Criteria
Following triage, our initial offer of a service is a strengths and needs based assessment to establish the level of caring responsibility. The outcome of the assessment will determine the level of support and services GYC can offer the young person and their family, therefore not all our services are guaranteed to every young carer. As a standard, with parental consent, we will liaise with schools and GPs, and families will receive our regular newsletter
