Young carers: ‘You are not alone’

It is essential that professionals working with children and young people meet the needs of young carers, and that young carers themselves know that they are not alone and that help is available to them. In this article, Laura Abbott-Mitchell shares her story as a young carer, her struggles and advice to others.

Why we still need the term ‘Young Carer’

Previous research on young carers has provided data on prevalence, the tasks performed, the impacts on the carer, and the supports they require. However, some in the disability rights movement argue that the numbers of young carers and the negative impacts of caring have been exaggerated, and that the children’s rights approach serves to undermine the rights of disabled and/or ill parents. The findings from exploratory research in Ireland suggest that it is not parental illness and/or disability that is a cause for concern, but instead levels of support to and awareness of young carers. It is argued that the term young carer should continue to be used and that services should be developed in Ireland specifically for young carers.

Young Carers in Northern Ireland: Perceptions of and Responses to Illness and Disability within the Family

This paper reports findings from a qualitative study undertaken with twenty-two young carers across Northern Ireland aged between eight and eighteen. It focuses on their experiences as informal care-givers in households where at least one family member was living with an illness and/or disability. While much has been written about the quantifiable aspects of informal care including the number of hours spent caring and the physical nature of caring tasks, this approach has tended to subsume individual experiences within the category ‘young carer’ and fails to differentiate between sub-populations of children and young people whose caring relationships may be very disparate. Whilst there has been a tendency to focus on the vulnerability of young carers, explanations as to why some experience greater physical, emotional and psycho-social difficulties than others are underdeveloped. It has been suggested that differential outcomes may be attributable to a capacity for resilience, which can lessen vulnerability. The study examined the protective and risk factors, which might help to promote or challenge the resilience of young carers. It was found that knowledge of and response to both the nature and trajectory of illness or disability contributed to young carers’ capacity for resilience.

Gospel on the Box: Can Television Drama be Missional?

In 2011 I wrote the television drama The Preston Passion for the BBC. The aim was to retell the story of Christ’s Passion in a series of provoking and unexpected ways. Pilate becomes a town mayor during a mill workers’ strike in nineteenth century England; Mary becomes a mother awaiting news of her son during World War I; Jesus is a young carer in contemporary Preston, a city in the north of England. Drawing on the experience of writing the drama, I aim to show how drama and mission are related enterprises, having a complex and nuanced relationship with one another and with the prevailing culture. These putative relationships find expression in shared prophetic modalities: truth-telling, challenge, and love. The article explores how these modalities are expressed in television drama and mission. I conclude by suggesting that both drama and mission also share a goal: personal and cultural transformation through bearing witness to the truth understood in a particular way.