Young carers in Sweden – A short overview
This short overview ‘Young Carers in Sweden’ is a summary of two reports on young carers in Sweden. The government initiated a wide spreading development work, in which the National Board of Health and Welfare, the National Institute of Public Health, Swedish municipalities and health care regions collaborated to strengthen support to children and young people in families with substance abuse, serious illness or mental ill-health, violence or death of a parent. These two reports provide the foundation for this work. The references to the original reports are found at the end of the overview. The overview builds on results from the studies:
- a survey to 15-year-olds in Sweden to explore if they perform care tasks and if so what types
- an online survey about how young carers are affected by providing care
- in-depth interviews with children and youths who have taken care of a family member.
The reports are produced by researchers at the University of Gothenburg. The work was commissioned by the Swedish Family Care Competence Centre (Nka)/Linnaeus University (LNU) who in turn had a remit from the National Board of Health & Welfare to build up a knowledge base and to disseminate the knowledge and enable knowledge exchange and learning networks to take place.
