Diolch.

Being a carer is never easy. It’s full of ups and downs. One day, life seems perfect, and another it’s falling apart. Caring makes us too empathetic, so we feel everyone’s pain, but we feel as though nobody understands our pain. Caring makes us feel lost and alone at times. I want to help all young carers, including myself, realise that they’re not alone and that although it causes heartache, being young carers can make us stronger, smarter and braver than most kids our age.’

That’s from Adele-Caitlin who is aged 16 and is a young carer.

I should start by welcoming the young adult carers and the YMCA project co-ordinators who have come to Cardiff from Swansea and Cardiff here today. This debate means a lot to them, because this isn’t just politics to young carers; the discussions we have here today are about their everyday lives and their experiences. I decided to bring forward this motion after attending a young carers event at the Senedd a few weeks ago, organised by the YMCA to highlight their excellent project Time for me, which organises support services for young carers and offers respite and advice. I heard in this event how young carers are proud of the care they give and of their responsibilities. They want to be able to help their families, but it is difficult. Of course, what I’ve heard from so many young carers is that they wouldn’t give up their responsibilities, but what they need is more support, more recognition of their role and more flexibility from school, health professionals and others when it comes to juggling what they do at home with the rest of their lives.

I recognise that there are requirements under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 to provide more support, with statutory responsibilities placed on local authorities. But what I hear from young carers and organisations working with them is that the current policy framework and funding arrangements aren’t enough. There are 11,000 young carers in Wales, and it’s very plausible that this is an underestimation because so many young carers do not seek or get support from schools, local authorities and health professionals. They don’t recognise them, and many young carers, for many reasons, do not come forward and seek the support that they actually need.

A major barrier is often due to lack of understanding. We heard that many teachers and health professionals simply do not possess the relevant training, guidance or experience necessary to identify young carers and their specific needs, or feel conflicted as to how to respond. Too many do not ask the relevant questions when dealing with a situation where a young carer is accompanying a parent or sibling to the doctor, for example, or a teacher that does not have the level of guidance necessary. I’ve heard examples of young carers, the primary caregiver to a parent with a limited physical or mental health condition, or sometimes a substance misuse issue, being asked to leave a room by a doctor or other health professional when that young carer actually needs to have their voice heard, and the health professional needs to hear from that young carer about the specific issues at home. I’ve talked with young people who have come forward to their schools with requests for flexibility in terms of timekeeping and attendance due to conflicting duties at home, only to be made to feel that their requests were not being taken seriously, and that parents were requested to corroborate what a young carer had said to them.

There is a certain stigma of being a young carer as well, and many young carers, we know, are bullied. One survey pointed to 68 per cent having been bullied at some point in their lives. Often, young carers are not really seeing themselves as a carer, but rather as someone who may just help out at home more than other children. Amongst other varied reasons, this is often a barrier to them requesting that support. That’s why I think it’s crucial that we up our efforts to ensure that professionals on the front line are able to help and identify young carers. Carers Trust Wales, with the Children’s Society, for example, have developed a teacher’s toolkit and operates the Young Carers in Schools Wales pilot programme. There have been good tangible results from this, but, clearly, much more work needs to be done, and we need to have a strategy in place to make sure guidance and training is spread out in a timely manner.

This brings me to my next point, and that is the variation of provision across Wales. At best, the levels of support available could be described as patchy. One local authority appeared to exclude one carer from applying for a carer needs assessment, but some other local authorities are much better at tackling the problems that young carers face. There are other barriers, of course, faced by young carers, not least practical issues such as the collection of prescriptions. At the moment, it’s down to the discretion of a pharmacist whether or not medicines are handed to a minor. Let me be clear: it would, of course, be ideal if no young carer needed to go to a pharmacy and collect medicines, some of which may be treatments for substance abuse, addiction or heavy painkillers, or to deal with chronic conditions, but sometimes they will need to, and we need to put measures in place so that they can access those treatments in a timely fashion, and so that young people don’t feel disrespected. I understand that feasibility studies are under way for a young carers card, which could help with this and could identify young carers, although I know, having spoken to some young carers, that they may feel that there’s stigma associated with this card as well. I would urge them not to think in this way, and to think of this as a way of helping people to understand them, to identify them and to be able to move forward, perhaps even have it as a discount card in shops and stuff, so that we can get the private sector involved in future.

I’d like to finish my closing remarks, as time is tight, by sharing the story of Anna. Anna is 11 years old and lives with her mum and two brothers, one older and one younger. Both mum and dad have a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and mum has been diagnosed with a mental health complaint, which, at times, manifests itself with severe mood swings and depression, which culminates in her being unable to parent for either Anna or her younger sibling. She is a regular user of prescribed, unprescribed and illegal drugs—the mother—and Anna’s older brother has a long history of criminal behaviour and has served custodial sentences, and is not interested in helping the family.

With regard to Anna’s story, she has been able to engage with the YMCA in Cardiff. She was, at first, reluctant, and she found it difficult to communicate, but now she participates in a project alongside her mother, and she has found that some of the burdens have been lessened on her and that her mother now can take some of those caring responsibilities back from her. This is the kind of person that we need to be helping, and this is the kind of person that we need to be ensuring is not suffering in silence. I think it’s important that we do have this Bill for young carers so that we can support them, and I take this debate in a most positive manner to hope that the Welsh Government can hear the concerns of Welsh carers and that we can become part of the debate, and that young carers here today can continue to be part of the debate in progressing what they need in their daily lives. I think it’s important for Assembly Members to listen, but also to act on what their demands are.