Five-year-old found to be doing "inappropriate" caring for age
The child was assessed by West Sussex County Council
Last updated 2nd Mar 2023
The youngest carer known to West Sussex County Council is only five years old.
The child was assessed by the council’s Young Carers service and found to be ‘doing inappropriate caring for their age’.
The information was shared during a meeting of the children & young people’s services scrutiny committee on Wednesday (March 1) where the extensive ongoing work being carried out to support young carers was discussed.
A report to the committee revealed that despite the efforts of the team and the help and support being offered, only 2,400 of an estimated 6,000 carers aged under 18 were on the service’s radar.
Caroline Pope, of Carers Support West Sussex, told the meeting that there had been a 35 per increase in the number of carers of all ages looking for help in the past year.
She said there were a lot of similarities between the problem being faced by young carers and those faced by the older ones.
She added: “As you would imagine at the moment, there’s a lot around financial and cost of living support as well as carers struggling with mental health and their own wellbeing.”
One theme which ran through the discussion was the need for schools, GPs and council services to be able to work together to identify young carers and ensure they had the help they needed.
Sarah Clark, manager of the Young Carers team, said there had been a 44 per cent increase in the number of referrals from West Sussex schools since the Children’s Commissioner launched The Big Ask survey.
The survey shone a light on young carers and, for the first time, schools were asked to identify those children shown as young carers within the annual school census.
In the autumn term of 2021/22, 41 referrals were made, rising to 59 at the same point in 2022/23.