If you provide unpaid care to a family member or friend who couldn’t cope without your support then you may be a young adult carer. The person being cared for may have an illness, disability, mental health issue or suffer from substance misuse, for example.

There are over 375,000 young adult carers in the UK. Caring responsibilities for young adult carers vary but may include:

• Physical care – like helping someone get dressed or other personal care
• Practical care – like collecting prescriptions or cooking meals
• Emotional care – like listening to the cared-for person if they’re upset or looking out for the cared-for person
• Indirect care – like looking after siblings or supporting a parent to care for a disabled sibling

The experience of every young adult carer is different. Some young adult carers may have a temporary caring role and others may have longer-term responsibilities. Similarly, some aspects of a young adult carer’s caring responsibilities may be very rewarding and others may be more challenging.

There are lots of support services available for young adult carers. Two young carers centres operate locally:

• Your Future YAC (part of Young Carers Coventry)
• Warwickshire Young Carers

Each service offers 1-1 support to young adult carers in Coventry and Warwickshire and can also provide support to young adult carers who are studying at Warwick. If you are a young adult carer studying at Warwick and would like more information about the support available, please contact Emily in the Widening Participation and Outreach Team – lifecycleteam@warwick.ac.uk.

There are also some useful places to seek support within the university when times are more challenging including:

• Wellbeing’s Carers webpage – lots of useful advice and support for all Warwick University students with caring responsibilities.
• Warwick Library’s ‘Students as Carers’ webpage – an outline of the various library services that you can access to support your studies at Warwick.
• University Transition Support webpages – a place to find out more information about starting university and the support available.

Other links and support services:

• The Carers Trust
• The Children’s Society
• Yacbook

We believe that every Young Carer should be able to access the information and support they need to lead happy and healthy lives. Young Carers can sometimes find it hard to find out everything they need to know to be able to make informed decisions about what they want to do after they finish school at 16.

Warwickshire Young Carers and the Widening Participation Team have worked together to try and put all of the information and links young carers and young adult carers need in one place in the E-Book on the right.

You can also download the E-Book here.

Many of our students at Warwick are responsible for the care or wellbeing of a child or children under 18. If you are a student with parenting responsibilities, then this might mean you are:

• A biological parent
• A step-parent
• An adoptive or legal parent
• A legally-appointed guardian
• A foster carer
• Someone who provides kinship or other parental care to the child of a family member or friend

Family life is important and balancing this with university studies can sometimes pose challenges. Some useful places to seek support when times are more challenging include:

• Wellbeing’s Carers webpage – lots of useful advice and support for all Warwick University students with caring responsibilities.
• Warwick Library’s ‘Students as Carers’ webpage – an outline of the various library services that you can access to support your studies at Warwick.
• Warwick’s Student with Dependents webpage – lots of information about the range of services at Warwick to support families, including Warwick University Nursery, holiday clubs, parents/carers networks and maternity/paternity/adoption leave advice.

Other links and support services:

• Information about the government’s Childcare Grant.
• Information about the government’s Parents’ Learning Allowance.
• Gingerbread advice for single parents who are students.

Our Widening Participation (WP) Student Network aims to provide current students from Widening Participation (WP) backgrounds the chance to meet peers, share experiences, find out about opportunities that are available to you and gain insight into a wide variety of topics.

You can find out more about the network here.

We have created a Moodle for a central place for current students to find all support services available to them. This will be available soon!