Are you a young adult caring for your disabled brother or sister?
NIACE - The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education - is looking for stories from young adult carers in order to work on supporting young adult carers with learning.
One of their projects is to produce a publication called ‘Voice of the Young Adult Carer’. This will be a collection of young adult carers’ stories, written by young adult carers themselves, highlighting the impact of being a carer, particularly upon their participation in learning.
If you are 16-25 and caring for your disabled brother or sister then you may wish to write your story and send it to NIACE. Nicola Aylward who is running the project wants as many stories as possible. You can write as much or little as you like and you will get help with editing it:
Here are some suggestions of key things young adult carers might wish to write about:
- When you started caring and who you cared for?
- When you realised you were a carer – how old were you?
- The impact that caring has had on your life, as a child, and particularly as you got older – when you became a young adult.
- How you felt/feel about being a carer – positives and negatives.
- How your caring role has affected your learning – any particular difficulties you encountered?
- Ways in which learning providers (such as school or college) supported and helped you. Any ways in which they were particularly unhelpful or unsupportive. What more could they have done to help you?
- Help/support you’ve received from others – such as carers’ services, youth projects.
- Your plans and aspirations for the future.
- Any messages that you’d like to send to learning providers, or to other young adult carers.
Nicola needs the information by 28th May and you can send it to her at the address below.
Nicola Aylward
Project Officer (young adults)
NIACE
21 De Montfort Street, Leicester, LE1 7GE
Telephone - 0116 2047059
E-mail - nicola.aylward@niace.org.uk
Website - www.niace.org.uk
