At YCDT we support young carers to reach their potential. Young carers are children and young people who sacrifice their own lives to care for a loved one with a disability, a long term illness or who suffers from mental health or substance misuse problems. Our intensive one-to-one mentoring programme sees our young carers paired with a mentor for four years, from age 15 (year 11) to age 19 (or the end of their first year of university or equivalent). During this time, we support young carers to attain better grades in their GCSEs and post-16 qualifications by providing tuition; we support them to make life-changing choices surrounding their post-16 and higher education options; we also support them to access meaningful employment. We do this because, on average, young carers achieved at least nine grades lower than their peers at GCSE, or three times as likely to be Not in Education Employment or Training (NEET), are woefully underrepresented at university and, if they get there are four times as likely to drop out.
The impact of our support has seen 75% of our young carers into their first choice university, with the remaining 25% accessing meaningful employment. We’ve also secured scholarships in fee paying sixth forms for 60% of our young carers for September 2021 and 33% in September 2020. The tuition we provide has, on average, improved grades by 1.8 (difference between a 3 and an all important 4, for example).
We also provide aspirational online content to young adult carers which helps improve their confidence, self-esteem, wellbeing and aspirations. This is through our regular webinars and our annual Young Adult Carer Aspirations Conference.