Young carers are young people (up to the age of 18 years) who are affected by chronic illness or disability of a family member and who provide them with care and support. Young carers are most likely to be caring for a family member who is either physically disabled, has a learning disability, mental health problems, misuses substances, is HIV positive or has AIDS. Young carers will often be responsible for a great deal of their own care.

For further information see the Joint Young Carers Strategy. This document is in portable document format for downloading and require Adobe Acrobat to access them.  The Adobe Acrobat reader can be freely downloaded from the Adobe Web site.