Young Carers Needs Assessments

1. How many requests for young carers needs assessments has the council received since 1 Jan 2021? Please provide a total number as well as a breakdown by age. If a breakdown by age cannot be provided, please provide a breakdown by age group.

     

2. Does the council run a young carers registry and, if so, please provide the number of individuals actively registered on it, both as a total number as well as a breakdown by age. If a breakdown by age cannot be provided, please provide a breakdown by age group.



3.  How much did the council spend, if anything, in the last fiscal year on support programs for young carers (i.e. unpaid carers 18 years of age or younger)?



4. Does the council have any specific supports in place for carers 8 years of age or younger? If so, what are they and how much money was spent on them in the last fiscal year?   



5.  Does the council have an age range for how it defines young carers?
 

1.  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 do not have a criteria that our Young Carers need to meet to receive support.

2. Lincolnshire County Council holds a register of all known Young Carers living in Lincolnshire, the numbers currently on our register are 3315 and the breakdown by age group is as follows:

1. Under 5 = 38
2. 6 – 9 = 491
3. 10 – 13 = 1204
4. 14 – 16 = 1028
5. 17 – 19 = 554

3. 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. Lincolnshire County Council do have support options in place for our Young Carers who are in the age range of 8 and under.  We offer a range of locality based ‘mini’ Young Carers sessions for Young Carers to attend along with their families.  This way we have found supports Young Carers confidence in meeting other children who are also Young Carers and supports their parents to feel confident they will be supported, along with helping them to develop further reaching networks by making links with other families who also have children who are Young Carers. We are unable to provide specific costs for this as outlined in the answer to question 3.

5.  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’.