TOGETHER project: awareness raising materials and workshops for young carers and their families

The Erasmus+ funded TOGETHER project aims to raise awareness on young carers and to support them and their families.

Young carers are children and young people providing significant or substantial care, assistance or support to family members who have a disability, suffer from a chronic illness, mental health problem or any other condition with long-lasting care needs. They assume a level of responsibility that would usually be associated with an adult and undertake a wide range of caring roles and tasks, including emotional support, personal care, housework and household budgeting. Caring activity during childhood and adolescence can have adverse impacts on health outcomes, social activity, educational engagement and employment opportunities for young carers.

For these reasons TOGETHER project ultimate goal is to have a positive effect on families where a young member and caregiving responsibilities co-exist, in order to prevent/reduce the negative impacts on him/her, as well as improve his/her well-being, social inclusion and community engagement.

To reach these goals in the last months the project consortium worked on the creation of resources (leaflets, posters, booklets, cards, bookmarks) to raise awareness at different levels:

• To young carers about the importance of understanding more about their parent or family member’s illness, discuss it in the family, and find supportive adults to talk to;
• To parents and family members to help them understand how caring for someone who has an illness, disability, mental or addiction problem, can affect young people and their lives;
• To professionals working with young people to raise awareness and help them understand the impact of young caring and what could they do to support young carers using a whole family approach.

Each partner created their own resources according to national needs and specificities.

All the resources, created in the different partners languages, English, German, Greek and Italian, are now under the process of validation and will be available starting from June.

In the meanwhile, TOGETHER project consortium worked on the creation of training workshops curriculum addressed to young carers (from 13 to 25 years old) and their family members. The seminars aim to support and encourage the creation of an open dialogue about the illness / condition of the care recipient, the impact on the young person and how the whole family can respond to this in order to support each other. The workshops will be an experiential opportunity for young carers and their family members to get involved into different practical activities aimed to help them reflect on different aspects linked to their care experience. The workshops will be held in the different partners countries starting from April 2021. Due to Covid-19 situation they will be held online.

Next steps

Next months TOGETHER project consortium will be engaged in the validation of awareness raising materials created and in the workshops implementation.

Once do that the next steps will consist in the creation of an e-learning programme for professionals about how to promote a whole family approach for to benefit of young carers.

Stay tuned for new information!

Do you want to know more?

To learn more about the project and to get involved in our future activities please visit our website www.togethereuproject.eu or follow us on the most popular social networks with #together_project