Who Cares, a new play by up and coming theatre company LUNG which ran to critical acclaim at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival and is co-produced with The Lowry, focuses on young people in Salford, Greater Manchester, who care for others but are largely ignored by government. A ‘young carer’ is defined as someone under the age of 18 - amounting to approximately 700,000 people in the UK.
Around one in 12 young people are expected to have to care for someone with a long-term condition at some point in their early lives. Many will miss, on average, 48 days of school a year, be subjected to bullying, and come from families who rely on food banks. Although the Children and Families Act of 2014 made it easier for young carers to get an assessment of their needs and introduced ‘whole family’ approaches to providing support, many councils lack guidelines as to what a support service should look like. The outcome is that many young carers still remain invisible, under the radar of professionals, teachers and friends. Even worse, they are often unaware that at least some support is available to them.
These circumstances give rise to problems with child development and educational achievement, and encourage the onset of isolation and depression. The state’s refusal to recognise that such children exist means that, in effect, they don’t. A blind eye is being turned to their needs even though young carers do the work of adult carers for free. Along with the 6.8 million other carers of all ages, they save the UK economy £132 billion a year.
