Young Carers leading the way in Manchester

In my week exploring Manchester as part of my Churchill Fellowship, I found myself navigating a city that has taken bold, systemic steps toward recognising and supporting Young Carers, not through a single service, but through a whole-of-community mindset. What I witnessed here challenged my assumptions, affirmed our work at Little Dreamers, and raised critical questions about the future of Young Carer support.

Over the week, I had the privilege of meeting with some of the most thoughtful and dedicated minds in the fields of youth, health, and carer support. I sat down with Professor Saul Becker, a globally recognised expert on Young Carers and Pro Vice-Chancellor at Manchester Metropolitan University; Dr Zarah Eve, a youth mental health researcher from Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust; and Stuart Dunne from Youth Focus North West, who leads powerful work in youth voice and regional collaboration. I also visited incredible service delivery models at Sheffield Young Carers, Cheshire Young Carers, and Manchester City Council. Each conversation revealed a different facet of best practice – from whole-of-system awareness and strengths-based programming to youth-led governance and research-led innovation.

One of the most grounding and empowering moments of the week was my conversations with Professor Saul Becker. 

I asked him what best practice looks like, and he was clear that it begins with knowing what outcomes Young Carers want for themselves, and working backwards from there.

He shared a powerful four-part framework for best practice:

1. Start with outcomes that matter to young people.
2. Be guided by principles: fairness, dignity, respect, and the mantra “nothing for us without us.”
3. Dedicate action to delivering key results, such as reducing caring responsibilities, enabling access to education, increasing time out from caring, and boosting confidence and participation.
4. Translate those commitments into research and evidence to further improve practice and add knowledge to the sector for others.

He reminded me: “Young Carers may still be impacted by the service [if we don’t ask them], they might just be impacted more if they were included in the planning and design.”

We discussed how the design of effective support must start with clearly defined outcomes e.g. what we want Young Carers to achieve in areas like education, wellbeing, agency, and social inclusion. Only then, Saul emphasised, should we begin shaping the programs, systems, and policies to deliver those outcomes. It’s the principle of form follows function. Too often, he warned, we rush to create services without first understanding what they’re meant to achieve.

Saul described a vision where Young Carers can fully participate in school and society, have equal opportunities to attend university or enter employment, and are not disadvantaged because of their caring responsibilities. He also reminded me that while we can help children adapt to their caring roles, it’s not sufficient: “We can’t reduce children’s caregiving roles unless someone else will do that for them.”

He also questioned the global over-reliance on respite. “Respite care has become an outcome in itself… but if nothing else has changed, it just means Young Carers are a bit better adjusted, until they’re exhausted again.”

We also discussed the concept of radical non-intervention, questioning whether services genuinely make a difference: “How do you know what you do is better than not doing anything at all?” It was a timely reminder to continually evaluate not just what we do, but why and how we do it.

Finally, he challenged the sector to build better tools. There is still no integrated assessment model that captures both the mental health needs of a young person and the impact of their caring role. Without these tools, we risk treating symptoms rather than root causes.

As I continued to explore the Young Carer sector in Manchester, I gathered even more insights that, along with my incredible discussions with Saul, could prove invaluable when considering support for Young Carers in Australia.

At Manchester City Council, I encountered a bold approach: they don’t fund a standalone Young Carer service. Initially, this raised questions, but the philosophy behind it is compelling: “If you have a standalone service, everyone else thinks it’s someone else’s problem.” Instead, they’ve embedded Young Carer awareness and support into every level of the system, from schools and GPs to youth and community services. Over 190 of the city’s 210 schools have a designated Young Carer Champion. These champions lead staff training, coordinate assemblies, and ensure students and families are aware of the support available.

Their approach is unapologetically proactive: “We don’t wait for the impact of caring to become visible.”

At Sheffield Young Carers, I encountered a truly youth-led organisation delivering a carefully balanced model of support. Their core program provides a year of intensive one-on-one and group-based support, followed by continued engagement through their Action Group. The Action Group isn’t a tick-box exercise. It’s deeply embedded in governance and decision-making right through to their hiring process, where applicants have to participate in both an adult and youth interview panel, and “If the adult and youth panel don’t agree, the person doesn’t get hired.” This ethos is reflected across the organisation – from co-hosting Annual General Meetings to delivering training to external providers. As one parent poignantly shared, “My daughter didn’t get a childhood like other children.” Sheffield Young Carers recognises this and works tirelessly to ensure that no child’s identity is reduced to their caring role.

At Cheshire Young Carers, I learned about the practicalities of identification and support, especially in schools, where there’s often resistance: “The challenge is that teachers say we’re identifying another problem they have to deal with.”

Despite this, they’ve developed a sophisticated assessment tool that uses a credit-based model to determine the level of support a Young Carer receives. Once identified, often through in-school assemblies, children are offered access to after-school clubs, school holiday programs, and leadership development opportunities. The organisation is passionate about supporting Young Carers through separate, youth-focused services, rather than folding them into adult-oriented systems.“It’s about giving these children a life, not a life as a carer.”

They’ve also developed a process that allows assessment results to follow a child if they change schools, ensuring continuity of care.

When I spoke with Stuart Dunne at Focus North West, we discussed what genuine youth participation really looks like. “Too often,” he told me, “youth voice sits in comms and engagement. But it belongs in policy.”

He introduced me to the Youth Combined Authority, a group of 46 young people representing geographic regions and identities, such as Young Carers and LGBTQIA+ communities. These young people guide regional policy and hold decision-makers accountable. In one recent example, they refused to endorse a youth strategy because they hadn’t been included in its development. Their message? “We want to be involved in the monitoring and evaluation to see how it’s being implemented.” This inclusion of youth voice isn’t tokenism. It’s meaningful, sustained participation.

Another standout moment came from my conversation with Dr Zarrah Eve at the Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust. Their research team is leading innovative work to make mental health services more inclusive and representative, particularly for marginalised young people.

I asked whether they collect data on caring responsibilities. “We do now,” she said. “We never used to.” That single sentence speaks volumes. Until we ask that question, we can’t begin to design services that respond to the lived reality of Young Carers.

At Little Dreamers, we recently launched the first mental health clinic globally designed specifically for Young Carers. But we’re still missing a key tool – there’s no validated assessment model that captures both caring responsibilities and mental health indicators. As Zarrah put it:

“There are tools that assess caring, and tools that assess mental health, but nothing that does both. It’s something we need.”

Manchester challenged me to rethink best practice, not as a set of services, but as a set of standards. Standards for embedding Young Carer awareness across systems. Standards for co-designing with, not just for, young people. And standards for what we expect every child to access: an education, a support network, and a future not defined by their caring role.

Across the city, I saw what’s possible when small, consistent changes are made in service of a bigger vision. 

It’s not about sympathy, it’s about systems. Systems that work with Young Carers, not around them.

Written by Madeleine Buchner OAM