Cheshire East Young Carers Service and the Cheshire East Carer's Hub

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 check is called a ‘Young Carer’s Needs Assessment’ which is completed by Assessors from the Cheshire East Young Carers Service. Our Assessors will talk with you either at school or somewhere else you feel comfortable to consider the care you are giving to someone else and to understand what support you may need for your own education or work, health, hobbies or activities. We may ask your parents or someone at school for their thoughts too.

This helps us to understand about your caring role and the impact it has on you. Then we can look at what support you feel you might need and how we can help with that. There are organisations across Cheshire East who can help to provide that support.

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?

You can ask for a Young Carers Needs Assessment. This means that someone from the Cheshire East Young Carers team will come to talk with you and listen to you, without judgement, to understand how you feel about caring and what you do to help.

How do I ask for an assessment?

We usually ask a parent or school to refer a Young Carer and they can do this by applying for a Young Carers assessment on our online portal. If you are 14 or older, you can refer yourself but you might want to talk it through with a parent/carer first.

What if I don’t want a Young Carers Needs Assessment?

You can ask for an assessment at any time so if it isn’t right for you now, you can ask another time. Instead, you might decide to talk to someone at school. They might have an offer of support there so you can talk through how caring feels and think about if you need support and understanding from school to help to make sure you can balance caring and doing well at school. They may have Young Carer events so you can meet others at school who also have a caring role.

You can also find other information about what is available for you through the Family Hubs page.

What happens after I ask for an assessment?

Someone from the team will get in touch and arrange to meet up to talk to you. It is often helpful to talk with a parent/carer and someone from school too so that we have a full understanding of your role and its impact. We usually do this in school but we can chat about meeting somewhere else if this isn’t possible.

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.

I think I might know a Young Carer

How do I know if they are a Young Carer?

The Carers' Trust 2025 says 'a young carer is someone aged under 18 who cares for a friend or family member who, due to illness, disability, a mental health problem or an addiction, cannot cope without their support'.

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

We offer a Young Carers Needs Assessment which helps us to look at the caring role with the young person, their family and their school. You can refer the young person in with consent from their parent/carer via the Cheshire East portal. 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.

What happens then?

A member of the Cheshire East Young Carers Service will be in touch to say they have received the referral and who will be booking in to see the young person. They will arrange to see them in school (if this is not possible, other arrangements will be made) and complete the assessment.

What support is available for Young Carers

Many Young Carers are happy to undertake this role and see it as part of their family life. Our work is to ensure that Young Carers are also able to prioritise their learning, that their mental and emotions wellbeing is supported, and they are not isolated from their peers. Sometimes they may want to talk through and understand the needs of the person they support and don’t always find it easy to do this with family members. We seek to support Young Carers in a variety of ways including 1:1 support, respite, helping to access school support and connecting them with other groups who can help. Older Young Carers (16+) may need some support transitioning from children’s to adult services.

You can also find other information about what is available for children and young people through the Family Hubs page.

What is in the assessment?

We ask the Young Carer about who they are as a person and the things that are important to them and about the person they look after, their needs and their condition. We ask about the things the young person does to help and how it feels. We will talk about their education and if they feel that their caring role has an impact on their ability to achieve their potential. We look at 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.

We look at the support they feel they have and the positive aspects of caring as well as 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 repeat the assessment to identify new areas of support required. A Young Carer will be offered a short review each year to help to identify if this is needed and to given them an additional opportunity to talk about their caring role.

After the assessment

After the assessment, some support may be continued with the Young Carers Service but it also may be offered by the Cheshire East Carers' Hub.

Young Carer support could look like:

1:1 or group support
providing respite activities
providing opportunities to meet and get to know other Young Carers
notifying your GP of your caring status
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 transition to further education or into the work place

Someone from the Assessor Team or the Carers’ Hub will check in around six months later to see that the support we have offered has been helpful.

You can take a Young Carers assessment if you, your parent/carer or an agency that are supporting you feel you would benefit from the support.

Transition to Adult Services support

For young people aged 17 and a half, we have a slightly different assessment which also includes questions around 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 schools

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 updates and also 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 offer general staff and Young Carer Champion 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.

Page last reviewed: 14 October 2025

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