Information Regarding Young Carers

RE: I am requesting information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 regarding the council's support for Young Carers.

General 

1. How the council defines a young carer.

2. The number of young carers who were referred to your services.  

3.The annual budgets in the financial years between 2020 and 2025 that were allocated to supporting young carers.           

4.The criteria young carers must meet to receive support from the council          

5. Grants available to young carers, their purpose, and their monetary amount.

6. Needs Assessment and Transitional Support 

7. The proportion of young carers referred to the council who had a needs assessment.   

8. The percentage of young carers over 18 who received a transition assessment before they turned 18.  

 

Respite Support        

9. A list and details of any respite schemes for young carers, whether they are fully funded, and who is responsible for fulfilling them.    

10. The number of young Carers receiving each type of respite support (A and B - as defined below).       

11. For those receiving respite support, please provide the number of days of respite each young carer may receive on average per (Type A and B defined below). 

 

Respite type and other definitions 

A. Support that allows carers to take a break from caring, while the person they care for is looked after by someone else. 

B. Trips, activities, workshops, therapeutic support or social opportunities that young carers receive from the council. 

 

Young carer: A young carer may be a child or young person under 25 who provides unpaid regular or ongoing care, or

emotional support to someone who is physically or mentally ill, disabled, or misuses substances.

 

Department for Learning and Leadership - University College London

I can confirm that the information requested is held by Lincolnshire County Council. I have detailed below the information that is being released to you. 

1.           Lincolnshire County Council defines a Young Carer as –

‘A Young Carer is someone under the age of 18, who provides or intends to provide care for another person’.

Our support for Young Adult Carers who are over 18 yo, is delivered by a Commissioned Service – Carers First

2.           Lincolnshire County Council hold a register of all our known Young Carers, the numbers identified to us since 2020 is as follows:

2020 – 361 Young Carers identified

2021 – 410 Young Carers identified

2022 – 537 Young Carers identified

2023 – 712 Young Carers identified

2024 – 665 Young Carers identified

2025 –  466 as at 3/9/25

There are currently 3171 on our Young Carers register

3.           Following completion of the Early Help Assessment, any identified Young Carers in Lincolnshire will have support to access the support they would most welcome.  Lincolnshire County Council put on specific Young Carer activities across the County so that Young Carers have access to other young people in their local area.  These are age-appropriate groups run throughout a month and in local centres, as well as some run in their secondary schools.  Within this provision specifically, they also have access to bigger events through the year, usually at Christmas and over the summer.  This also includes access to our Holiday and Activity Fund (HAF) provision.  For young carers under the age of 8 (our Mini Young Carers), we offer groups run in local centres which include a parent and are less frequent than for older Young Carers.  

At times, the support needed by the Young Carer will include more regular access to other provision within their community, such as access to local sports clubs, and the child’s network will support to remove barriers so that they can attend what will be most meaningful for them. 

Whilst our current recording can identify how much we have spent on supplies/materials for the specific Young Carer groups that are run by our staff, however, is not inclusive of cost for our staff time to run these groups, and nor is it of the costs to support the Young Carers to access these groups in mileage payments and/or taxi services.  The buildings utilised for the monthly groups run are generally LCC so their cost is not included either.  This also does not include the money spent to support Young Carers to access other provision in their community or HAF activities.  As this is the case, we cannot provide accurate figures to incorporate all that is spent on Young Carers because it comes under several different cost codes.

4.           In Lincolnshire, we do not undertake separate assessments for young carers and instead the professional that knows them best will complete an Early Help Assessment with the consent of the family and young carer themselves.  These assessments are holistic in nature and will identify what the caring role is and whether others need to become involved to support the family regarding any unmet needs.  The focus is to learn as much as possible about the lived experience of that young carer and what support they would welcome regarding their caring role.  As such we don’t not have a criteria that our Young Carers need to meet to receive support.

5.           There are no grants available at the time of writing for our Young Carers.  Where there are unmet needs identified within the EHA, then a review of how best these can be met will take place to explore best ways of supporting the young person and their family.

6.           As outlined above, in Lincolnshire we use an holistic EHA that is used in both internal Early Help services and by our partners.  As part of our offer and commitment to support Young Carers, our transition offer is supported by the Young Carer register we keep, this means that consent has been gained on identification that Young Carers and their families wish to be kept updated with information about support and services available, we do this annually for all Young Carers, and that on reaching their 16th birthday we will contact them to offer them a Transition Conversation, which includes exploration around if their situation has changed.  If they would like to talk to someone to discuss their plans and home situations and explore opportunities for further support around their caring role, then we would ask them who they feel comfortable talking to about their situation, i.e. school/college/commissioned adult services practitioner/Early Help, this is when an updated EHA would be discussed, which is our Transition Assessment.  If they don’t feel this is needed at 16yo, we will continue to offer these discussions annually up until their 19th birthday/they take up the offer or transition into adult services.  We work closely with our Adult Services colleagues and conversations are offered if a Young Carer requests the support to be discussed by a practitioner from adult services.

7.           As outlined above, in Lincolnshire we use our Early Help Assessment as our Young Carers/Needs Assessment.  From the numbers identified, an EHA was completed for:

2020 – 361 Young Carers identified 113 assessed via EHA

2021 - 410 Young Carers identified 206 assessed via EHA

2022 – 537 Young Carers identified 408 assessed via EHA

2023 - 712 Young Carers identified 437 assessed via EHA

2024 – 665 Young Carers identified 462 assessed via EHA

8.           The number of Young Carers who received a Transition Assessment before they were 18 is as follows:

2020 – of 159 YC ending with CS, 6 requested Transition Assessments

2021 – of 164 YC ending with CS, 40 requested Transition Assessments

2022 – of 185 YC ending with CS, 52 requested Transition Assessments

2023 – of 173 YC ending with CS, 79 requested Transition Assessments

2024 – of 217 YC ending with CS, 77 requested Transition Assessments

2025 – of 127 closed to CS so far, 60 requested Transition Assessments

9.           Lincolnshire is a large county which is split into 4 main locality areas, each area has its own Early Help and Social Care Team and Young Carer support via the Local Authority is delivered predominantly by the Early Help Teams in each locality.

The number of specific Young Carer groups delivered each month across the localities during term time are = 28 per month – fully funded

Holiday Activities =      10                        fully funded

Trips =                8                          funded/partial funding/charitable support

Holiday Activities =      Mini young carers activity in each locality for summer holiday = 4 (1 in each locality)

                                           Young Carers are supported to access HAF activities - funded

Young Carers are supported to access Positive Futures Activities during holidays – funded

Young Carers are also supported to access local universal provision during summer holiday/main holidays

Specific numbers for HAF for Young Carers is not available currently available

10.        Numbers attending groups varies across the localities but average quarterly         data shows:

Quarterly number of groups = 58 average

Quarterly young carers supported by groups = 491 approximately.