Cheshire East Young Carers Service

What is a Young Carer

A Young Carer is someone aged 5 to 17 who helps to look after someone in their family who is unwell, disabled, has a special educational need or misuses drugs or alcohol. This may be a sibling, a parent or another family member. They may care for more than one person or even have a condition or SEND themselves.

The Care Act 2014 gives Young Carers more rights to ask for help and Local Authorities must offer a check of what support a Young Carer might need as soon as they can through the Cheshire East Young Carers Service.

Support for Young Carers

The Cheshire East Young Carers Service supports young carers between 5 and 18 years.

The team work with the young person, their family, school and other professionals to provide options for young carer support depending on the young person’s needs.

Young carer support could look like:

1:1 or group support
activities to provide the young carer with a break
providing opportunities to meet and get to know other young carers
signposting or referring to specialist organisations for wellbeing or other interests
talking with school or college to help to overcome barriers you might find in being able to do your best in education
supporting with the move into further education or into the workplace
Young Carers Statutory Needs Assessment

The Young Carers Statutory Needs Assessment

The Young Carers Statutory Needs Assessment take place in the young person’s school.

We ask the young carer about:

who they are as a person and the things that are important to them, the person they look after, their needs and their condition
the things the young person does to help and how it feels
their education and if they feel that their caring role has an impact on their ability to achieve their potential
the impact caring may be having on their physical health, spending time with their friends, their emotional wellbeing and feeling heard and supported in their role
the support they feel they have and the positive aspects of caring
any changes the Young Carer would like to make

From this we can build a support plan to meet these needs. If a young carer’s situation changes, we can revisit this.

Young Carer Activities

The Cheshire East Young Carers Service offer monthly groups in Macclesfield, Congleton and Crewe after school for our young carers to get to know each other, have a break from their caring role and experience new things. We also hold sessions as part of the Cheshire East Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme which provides families with fun activities, healthy meals and more during school holidays. This is free for recipients of income-related free school meals.

Young Carer Activity Flyer (PDF, 380KB)

I think I might be a Young Carer

How do I know if I am a Young Carer?

It might be helpful to think about your family and who you live with. Does anyone in your home or family have a long term illness, struggle with their mental health, have a neurodiversity or disability? Perhaps they struggle to get around the house or regularly feel poorly?

The second thing to consider is what you do to help them because of that. Some of the things that Young Carers do might be:

help with cooking or cleaning
remind someone to take their medicine
help them get dressed or move around
look after younger brothers or sisters
keep them company so they don’t feel lonely

This sounds like me. What do I do now?

Speak with an adult you trust, this maybe someone at home or school.

You might not think that you need support at the moment, but getting to know other young carers and engaging with a young career community can bring long term opportunities.

If you feel you would like support an adult can put you in contact with the Young Carers Team. They will visit you at school and talk to you about your caring role and how it affects you. The team will work together with you to see what you enjoy doing and what you are happy to help with. We can also explore what you might find difficult and what support you think you might need to continue caring. We can then create a plan to help to build this support. they can help to talk with school to find how they can support you.

I think I might know a Young Carer

I think they are a Young Carer. What do I do now?

Please provide a young carers service leaflet (PDF, 200KB) to the family and discuss options with them.

If you would like to refer to the Young Carers Service, please gain consent and complete the Young Carers referral form. You will need to have information about who they live with, who they support, how they support them and how they feel caring is impacting them. The team will update you once we have received it. A member of the team will then make contact with the family and discuss options for young carer support with them.

Transition to Adult Services support

For young people who are 17 years old, we will talk with you about finance, moving into the workplace and further education. Within future planning, we also consider if you are thinking about continuing your education and can offer support in this transition. We can also look at whether you would like to continue support with the Adult Carers service with The Carer’s Hub.

Working with staff in education

Part of our service is making sure that schools in Cheshire East understand what is happening for young carers nationally and locally. We work as a point of contact for to support schools so they know about the barriers a young carer may face as well as help them to consider ways in which to best overcome them. We have ambitions that every young carer in Cheshire East is able to access support from their school. We offer staff training in schools to help to identify young carers and can also work to help to build support for individual young carers in those settings. The Children’s Society and the Carers Trust run a young carers in schools award and we offer support for schools in obtaining that.

If you have any questions please contact youngcarersteam@cheshireeast.gov.uk

Page last reviewed: 17 March 2026

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