YC Bytes

Becoming Independent

• Young Carer team at Carers NSW • Season 1 • Episode 3

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In this episode, the Carers NSW Young Carer team speaks with a young carer and a leading Australian researcher on young carers’ experiences transitioning out of high school and becoming independent, including moving out of home and making decisions about further study or work options.

For support as a young carer, check out Carer Gateway or call 1800 422 737 to find out what’s available in your local area. Carer Gateway is a national model of carer support, and available to any carer across Australia.

The Carers NSW Young Carer Program can also assist young carers living in NSW find the right support for them. Contact the Young Carer team by calling 02 9280 4744 during business hours, or email yc@carersnsw.org.au. 

Subscribe to the Carers NSW Young Carer Program monthly YC eNews to stay up to date with opportunities and updates from the team, and follow the Carers NSW Young Carer Program on Facebook.

For more information about Carers NSW, please visit the Carers NSW website.

 

If you’re interested in young carer research, please check out:

Natalie:

Hi, and welcome back to YC Bytes-

Sarah:

YC Bytes.

Natalie:

… a podcast series by Carers New South Wales, where we shine the light on young carers.

Sarah:

Young carers are children and young people, 25 years and under, who help care for someone living with a disability, mental illness, drug or alcohol dependency, chronic condition, terminal illness, or who is frail.

Natalie:

Carers NSW would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians, countries, and language groups of New South Wales on which we all live, learn, and work. We are recording this podcast on the lands of the Gorualgal people of the Eora nation. We acknowledge the wisdom of elders past and present and pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities of today.

In this podcast series, we'll be speaking with different guests on why it's important for us to acknowledge and celebrate this group of young people, explore some of the barriers of getting through school and work while helping look after someone, and starting the conversation about accessing supports and services.

Hi everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of YC Bytes. My name is Natalie- 

Sarah:

My name is Sarah- 

Natalie:

And we are from the Carers NSW Young Carer team.

Welcome back! The last few weeks have been very busy for us. We've been preparing for and celebrating National Carers Week. So for listeners who don't know, National Carers Week is an opportunity for us to recognise and celebrate the 2.65 million people across Australia who provide care and support to a family member or friend. And in this time, we also celebrate the 83,700 young carers right across New South Wales for their enormous contribution to our communities.

Sarah:

In this episode, we will be talking about young carers becoming independent. So I guess in this time of someone's life, there's a lot of decisions to make about future planning and what they want to do in their life after school. And sometimes, I guess, making these decisions can be a little bit challenging.

Natalie:

This series has been planned so that we can spend each episode talking about the next phase of a young carer's life. We've had some really interesting conversations with young carers over the years about when they finish high school and supporting them to think about what they want to do next. So whether they decide to continue with their studies or move out of home, maybe involves getting their driver's licence, which will mean they'll have more time to help family, but also more time to hang out with their friends.

Sarah:

This episode and next episode might overlap a little bit as next episode we are talking about young carers deciding whether they want to work or continue their study after high school. And many of the decisions young carers make about their future study or employment might actually be related to their level of independence, their caring responsibilities, I guess, where they're living, their financial situation or even their access to transport.

Natalie:

So to explore this topic of independence further, we interviewed Associate Professor Myra Hamilton. Myra is a sociologist and a social policy researcher, and she has done some amazing research on young carers and their experiences after high school.

Hi Myra, thank you so much for joining us. Would you mind please introducing yourself?

Myra:

My name is Myra Hamilton and I'm a principal research fellow at the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research at the University of Sydney.

Natalie:

Wonderful. So would you mind please telling us a little bit about your research on young carers and why the topic interests you?

Myra:

Sure. I started doing research about and with young carers back in 2008, and the work that we have done has really focused on lots of different aspects of the care experience for young carers and also the impacts that caring at a young age has on their lives. So we've looked at the impacts of care on school, on work and transitions to adulthood, on social relationships and health and wellbeing. And we've also done a lot of work on the policy and service context and how it can better support young carers. It's always been one of my favourite research subjects, partly because I find young carers very interesting in terms of the policy and service context. They are often a very invisible provider of care, but also they're just a very enjoyable group to do research with.

Natalie:

Very cool, I agree. They are an incredibly insightful group. Yeah, so wonderful to work with. Do you think, for a young person who might have caring responsibilities and who are currently at school, do you see any strong, kind of, advantages or disadvantages for them, thinking about how their caring responsibilities might play a bigger part in their future choices or their development more generally maybe?

Myra:

Yeah, I mean there are certainly disadvantages that young carers have reported to us in terms of their capacity to engage in school in the way that they would like to and in the way that they see their friends who are not carers. But there are also advantages, the young carers that we speak to report really enjoying and valuing the learning and friendship that they find at school and really report a sense of, I guess, confidence in their own competence that arises from their caring responsibilities and the skills and aptitudes that they develop through their caring responsibilities.

Natalie:

Absolutely. So thinking about young carers leaving school and gaining independence, we understand you've done some research on this as well and also around some of the decisions they have to make in order to continue with their caring role in that new stage of life, adulthood. How do you think the experience transitioning to independence is different for young carers compared to other young people who don't have caring responsibilities?

Myra:

So we have done some research speaking with young carers about their plans after finishing secondary school. One of the areas we talked about was the transition into higher education. So the caring responsibilities didn't shape their aspirations to go to university, but what it did shape was how they planned to go about doing that. Another area was moving out of home. This was something that the young carers we spoke to really thought very, very deeply about and sometimes felt quite conflicted. So as we know, many young people at that stage of life really have a desire to be more independent and to start to take steps to become more financially independent, physically independent in terms of living outside of the parental home and independent in other ways.

So for the young carers that we spoke to, they had these desires too, but they also had a very, very strong sense of commitment and obligation to family. And they talked about things like moving out of home but living very nearby. And they had a very strong commitment to their other family members that would remain living in the family home, and were very cognisant of the potential additional care responsibilities that their other family members would have if they left home. And so they were very mindful of managing that carefully so that they could pursue pathways to independence, but also maintain their commitment to family.

Natalie:

Do you think that caring impacts a young person's choices about their future employment pathways? You have touched on this already around study, but I guess, just more broadly, do you think that their caring role has an impact on their choices there?

Myra:

I do think it has an impact on their employment choices. I think it has different kinds of impacts. It definitely has an impact on their decisions about part-time work. And the young carers that we've spoken to over the years have talked quite extensively about the challenges of balancing care and part-time work and just how important it is to have employers that are flexible and understanding of their care responsibilities. And then I guess there are the longer term career aspirations, and I think their care responsibilities shape those as well. So we had lots of young carers telling us that they were planning their careers not just around what their care responsibilities were at the moment, but they'd thought quite carefully about what their care responsibilities were likely to look like into the future. And they were planning their careers around those sort of future anticipated care responsibilities.

The other thing that I would say is that many young carers that we speak to identify skills and dispositions and aptitudes that they've acquired directly as a result of their care responsibilities. And they're very proud of these and they give them a sense of the kind of work that they would excel at. And so some of them tell us about really trying to find opportunities for careers where they can use these skills that they already know they have.

I think the only other thing I would say is that I think there's a lot more room in the policy and service context to support young carers’ transitions from school and beyond, because we have heard from young carers that they deeply value the young carer services that they access while they're at school, but they have a hard time transitioning to adult services. And they experience challenges in finding services that supported them with those kind of transitions through higher education into the labour market, into independent living. Transport was a very big one, for example, that they experienced very extensive challenges in getting to and from university, managing to take the person that they care for to appointments, obtaining their driver's licence. And so I would also add that there's a lot of scope for policy and services to really step into that space to support young carers.

Natalie:

We certainly hear that as well. I think there's a lot of room for improvement in those key points in a young carer's life, because everything they know in their routine from primary and secondary schooling all of a sudden is different. They're moving into a whole new space where they're trying to find themselves as a person, but also still juggle all these different aspects of their life. So certainly we have heard that in our work in the Young Carer Program as well, that support during those moments can be hard to find and is really beneficial to the young carer if they are able to get the help they need to help them through those periods of their life.

I'm just curious to know if anything really jumped out at you as being particularly intriguing that maybe you haven't had an opportunity, possibly, to deep dive into yet, or any kind of really interesting gems that young carers shared with you on this topic in particular around exactly what we've discussed, moving out of home, deciding on tertiary education, all those sorts of things?

Myra:

I guess the other thing that we haven't explored in detail, but which has certainly emerged as important, is that we know from research on young people generally, that those sort of teenage years and post-secondary transitions are really important socially. And there's a tendency to sort of downplay peer relationships and social and recreational activities as something extra. But the research suggests that for teenagers, those social relationships and recreational engagements are really important for their social and emotional wellbeing, particularly in that life stage and for their cognitive development. And so the young carers that we've spoken to about, kind of, life transitions post-school also talk about the limitations on their capacity to engage in social activities, build new social relationships. I mean, going to university is a really important opportunity for many young people to build new social relationships. And so that's another area that I think really needs some more work to understand what it really means for young adult carers in the transitions post-school.

Sarah:

It's really interesting for us to explore this concept of independence. So we know from when we're speaking with young carers that their caring role can provide them with many opportunities to build independence, especially when they have big responsibilities. So when they are driving the person that they care for to appointments or when they're cooking meals, for example, or when they have that financial responsibility of paying bills. On the other hand, their caring roles might also limit them from being able to move out of home, maybe even to get a full-time job or move through the milestones that we actually associate with independence.

Natalie:

Myra has worked with Carers NSW on a number of research projects over the years. One more recently was conducted in 2020 and it looked at the experiences of 28 young carers, aged 16 to 25, from right across New South Wales. This study helped us better understand the experiences and support needs of this age group, and highlighted a range of themes including education, employment, relationships, and access to services. Research is really important to us in the team and more broadly at Carers NSW, because it helps us understand young carers’ experiences better. And it allows us to embed the young carer voice throughout the work we do, and certainly in the final report of this research project as well, which you can find on the Carers NSW website. We will also link this report in the episode’s show notes on Buzzsprout.

Sarah:

So we know that each young carer’s experience is different, and this is evident when reading the full findings in the ‘Young carer research project’. We also wanted to feature a young carer's experience in this episode and we were lucky enough to be able to have a chat with Kelsie. Kelsie is a young carer who will share a little bit about her journey going to school in regional New South Wales to now attending university in Sydney.

Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and who you care for?

Kelsie:

So my name's Kelsie and I'm 20 years old. I care for my mum and my sister who both have intellectual disabilities. Growing up, my caring role involved completing daily tasks around the house, so cooking and cleaning and driving them to appointments. And now the bulk of my caring role is spent providing emotional support.

Sarah:

Yeah. And are you working? Studying? What are you doing at the moment?

Kelsie:

I'm currently studying engineering in Sydney, which is very exciting. I made the move last year to study here coming from regional New South Wales.

Sarah:

Yeah, amazing. And what's that move been like for you?

Kelsie:

Yeah, so overall I've really enjoyed it. I've loved it coming to Sydney and experiencing so many new things and I've actually found that the move hasn't been too difficult in terms of finding that independence. I think there were so many transferable skills that I already had from being a young carer that when I moved here I was able to implement and it wasn't too much of a struggle to learn how to live by myself. I also found that when I first moved here, I went into catered accommodation and I actually found that really weird because I've been so used to cooking, and I almost felt really lazy for having someone else cook for me. So now that I live in an apartment, I think it's much better for me and what my needs are.

Sarah:

That's amazing. So we know for some young carers, school engagement can be a little bit of a challenge. Was school engagement or attendance or getting good grades ever a challenge for you?

Kelsie:

I think that I definitely found it difficult at times to complete my assignments on time and get homework in when I needed to, but I had a really good support network so even when I did find those challenges were becoming more present, I had teachers who were there and they were understanding and they gave me some allowances where I needed it.

Sarah:

The research tells us that young carers are less likely to finish school and get a post-secondary education. Was there ever a time for you where you thought about not continuing your studies?

Kelsie:

Not at all. I've always been really interested to go to uni and I'm really lucky that my mum and my other immediate family members were all very, I guess, supportive of that, and excited for me to go into that next step of my life.

Sarah:

When you were about to finish high school, do you think that your role as a young carer had an influence on what you chose to do next?

Kelsie:

Yeah. I remember at one point I was considering maybe not moving as far away from home or even at one point I remember considering distance education, which after years of wanting to move far away and be in a completely new place, I was actually quite nervous about leaving my family and what they would have to do without me. So that definitely played a role, but I realised that if I can go and I can have these experiences and I can learn as much as I can, then I'm able to give way back more to them than I would if I didn't go out and seek all of that.

Sarah:

Yeah, that's awesome. And was there anything that helped you, I guess, process that or helped you make that decision?

Kelsie:

I think after years of giving so much of myself to my family, and my mum really pushing me to do university, I kind of realised that that was what I needed to do and that holding myself back wasn't the best outcome.

Sarah:

Yeah, for sure. And is there anything you would like to tell younger Kelsie, if you could? So kind of knowing where you're at now and thinking about where you were as a younger young carer, is there anything that you would like to tell younger Kelsie?

Kelsie: 

I think that I would definitely let her know that all of the time spent working hard, all of the time working part-time and studying hard and caring for my family, will all pay off and will definitely help, and that I'm grateful for every second I spent doing all of that. And also to just relax and have more time with your family and make the most of living with them while you can.

I think that coming to Sydney and already having such a big challenge in that, having those skills and not having to stress about those, lifted a massive weight off of my shoulder. Because everything was already so foreign and so different, and I had to adapt in many different ways. I had to learn how to use public transport and I had to learn to leave earlier because you can't get to everything in five minutes. So there were already lots of things that were different, but having that concrete set of skills that I could just take with me wherever I went, definitely made things easier.

Sarah:

Yeah, amazing. And what was it like for you, I guess being a young carer and living at home, supporting your mum and your sister, what was it like for you to, once you moved out of home, then focus on just you? Was that a bit of a journey in itself or did that kind of come naturally and what was that like?

Kelsie:

Yeah, I think I definitely haven't moved out of my caring role. I very much still always message my mum, always check in with my sister. I always offer if there's anything they need help with to just send me a message or call me. And I do my best to support them here. So I think that moving away from home, I thought that it would be a bit clearer and it would be okay, when I go back home, I'm a young carer again, but when I'm here I'm just focusing on myself, but I think that being a young carer is so much of who I am that I can't just separate the two.

Sarah:

Yeah, and we definitely hear that from other young carers as well. So you're not alone in experiencing that. Do you feel a sense of achievement with your decisions to move out of home and go to university and I guess, live your life away from where you grew up basically? Do you feel a sense of achievement?

Kelsie:

Yeah, I think so. I think talking to other students who have also moved from regional New South Wales here, they kind of over all of the things like the beach and all of the amazing activities that we have to offer in Sydney. So they're kind of just used to everything now. But for me, I still feel so excited by everything and I'm still just in absolute awe that I get to live here and experience all of it.

Natalie:

Thanks for listening to this episode. We hope you have found the conversation interesting.

Sarah:

If you're a young carer or you know a young carer who needs practical support, you can call Carer Gateway on 1800 422 737.

Natalie:

Join us next episode for conversations with young carers and other guests about navigating employment, tertiary education, and young carers achieving their own goals as they move into adulthood.

We'll see you then!