Young people who are kinship carers

National Children’s Commissioner, Megan Mitchell, recently released a report titled “‘We’re just kids as well’: towards recognition and support for young kinship carers”. The report involved interviews with 42 young kinship carers and 16 young people, about their experience as a kinship carer. Most people think of kinship care arrangements involving adults like grandparents or uncles and aunties. While this is common, there are a large group of young kinship carers - often siblings caring for younger siblings. The report highlights that these young kinship carers are largely systematically excluded from both financial and non-financial support as they do not always fit definition of a ‘carer’ (parent, adoptive parent, foster carer, grandparent carer etc) resulting significant disadvantage to the child and young carer.

Go to “‘We’re just kids as well’: towards recognition and support for young kinship carers”