The project targeted youth workers and other professionals in Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Scotland who work with young carers directly or indirectly. Young carers can be defined as young people who provide assistance or support to another family member. They carry out, often on a regular basis, significant or substantial caring tasks and assume a level of responsibility which would not usually be associated with their age group. The person receiving care is often a parent but can be a sibling, grandparent or other relative who is disabled, has some chronic illness, mental health problem or other condition connected with a need for care, support or supervision. Although research has provided clear evidence that heavy caring responsibilities can result in emotional difficulties, health problems, social exclusion, and limited opportunities for social and leisure activities, professional support services are lacking in many EU countries. This is largely due to the fact that the youth work, educational and social services sectors are not aware of this group. However, it can be seen from the UK experience that young carers are a large and important group that youth services need to address. Thus, the EPYC project’s objective was professionalizing youth work so they would put young carers on their agenda. This again will ideally allow young carers to take part in school, education, social life, and not be disadvantaged by their caring responsibilities. The partnership consisted of five organisations from four countries. Diakonisches Werk Berlin as the coordinator is a non profit institution based in Berlin, Germany, that provides many different social services. Care Alliance Ireland is the National Network of Voluntary Organizations Supporting Family Carers. The goal ist to enhance the quality of life for Family Carers. This is achieved by supporting the member organisations in their direct work with Family Carers through the provision of information, developing research and policy, sharing resources, and instigating opportunities for collaboration.Anziani e non solo is a non-profit organization working in the field of social research, community development, advocacy and training for informal carers. Carers Trust are the largest provider of comprehensive carer support services in the UK. Carers Trust works with the Scottish Government to influence national policy impacting on young carers, by feeding in responses from consultations with the network. They were key partners in developing the first ever national young carers strategy in Europe. The Austrian Red Cross is a private independent NGO. It is guided by the fundamental principles of the Red Cross movement and its volunteers and staff engage in many humanitarian activities to help the most vulnerable people in society, nationally and internationally. Versari Macrelli is a school with three fields of study: accountant, graphic, social operator. Many students show disinterest in school, have family problems and economic hardship. The main result of the project is the availability of a set of tools and interventions that empower professionals and service providers to support young carers. Such tools include handbooks, questionnaires, motivational interviews, checklists, etc. In addition, the creation of practical support services were promoted through a guidance report based on model support projects established by partners in their region. The tools are intended to allow identification of young carers; to allow practitioners to assess the situation of young carers, including measuring the level and impact of the care burden; and to allow practitioners to develop an action plan to address issues adversely affecting young carers. The tools were adapted when already existing in a partner country, or developed ex novo, and pilot-tested. Impact on participating organization was high in terms of awareness raised for young carers issues across all countries. Dissemination activities were also successful in terms of stakeholders who showed interest in the topic and the projects results. Peer evaluation of outputs confirmed useful resources and tools that have the potential to empoer professionals to support young carers. As all partners will continue raising awareness for young carers in their region, the project produced useful tools to support this work and in the medium term make young carers a well know target group among youth work in Europe.

Young carers are children and young persons under 18 providing significant or substantial care, assistance or support to family members who have a disability, suffer from chronic illness, mental health problem or other condition connected with a need for care. They assume a level of responsibility that would usually be associated with an adult. Young carers 18-24 years old are referred to as young adult carers. Although there are no data available for all countries involved in the partnership, we know that the phenomenon is wide-spread. For example, according to statistics 6,2% of German teenagers provide care for a ill family member, 7% of Italians 15-24 years older are young carers. In Scotland, 4.33% of the total number of young people aged between 16 and 24 identified themselves as carers. On the other hand, when surveying in schools among students living with parents with some kind of chronic illness or disabilities, figures in Italy reached almost 20% of students. Young carers undertake a wide range of caring roles and responsibilities, including emotional support, personal care, housework and household budgeting. While research has found that caring can result in positive impacts, there is a relatively strong body of evidence on the adverse impact of caring on health outcomes, social activity, educational engagement and employment opportunities for young carers (e.g. Aldridge, 2008; Becker, 2007). As such, children who live with and care for parents or other family members who are ill or disabled may require support in their capacity as children and/or as young carers.Young carers are still very much invisible. On one hand, significant proportion of young carers have not disclosed their caring responsibilities to their school, they are no more likely to be in contact with social services than are their peers, and only a minority have had an assessment of their needs or been informed about sources of help (Barnardo’s, 2006; Dearden and Becker, 2004; The Children’s Society, 2013). On the other hand, many families do not recognise their children as ‘carers’ (Smyth et al., 2011), some children do not recognise or identify with the role, and there can be a degree of reluctance, even anxiety, among families in disclosing caring responsibilities.Building on this information, the TOGETHER project aims to support social inclusion and engagement of young carers in DE-OS-IT-GR and UK by helping young carers and professionals to adopt a whole family approach, where: members of the household (including the care-recipient) are encouraged to communicate openly about the illness and caring; the condition of the care-recipients are explained clearly to the younger members of the family; helping relationship building within the family; professionals are encouraged to take a whole-family approach when working with care-recipients. The TOGETHER project intends to reach this aims by developing, testing and dissemination three intellectual outputs: (1) awareness rising material to inform children and adults about how important is to cooperate and be supportive with each other when there is a caring responsibility in the family - IO1 (2) a training workshop curriculum for young carers and their families, to support the creation of an open dialogue about the illness / condition of the care recipient, the impact on the young persons and how the whole family can respond to this - IO2 (3) an e-learning programme for professionals about how to promote a whole family approach for young carers and how to replicate the workshop elaborated in IO3.Our ultimate goal is to have an impact on families where there are caring responsibilities and where there is a young member, in order to prevent / reduce negative impacts on him/her, as well as improving his/her well-being, social inclusion and community engagementAll partners involved in the proposal are organizations with solid backgrounds of work with and for young informal carers. All of the partners have also been working with or researching young carers and the issues that affect them.The coordinator is DWBS from Germany, while partners are ANS (Italy), EUROCARERS (BE), Carers Trust (UK) and EDRA (GR).

Adolescent young carers (AYCs) are young people (15-17 years old) providing significant or substantial care, assistance or support to other family members. The phenomenon is highly relevant across Europe, albeit specific data, awareness and supports are not frequently available. Taking on a caring role constitutes a relevant risk factor for the occurrence of both immediate and long-term problems in AYCs’ mental health, well-being and development, as well as for their transitions to adulthood, social inclusion, education and employability. The goal of the project is to strengthen the resilience of AYCs, improve their mental health and well-being, and mitigate the negative influences of psychosocial and environmental factors. The project develops an innovative framework of primary prevention interventions to be tested and adapted in six European countries (Italy, Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom) at different stages of awareness and development of services for AYCs. The project has three specific objectives: (1) to systematise knowledge on AYCs; (2) to co-design, test and deliver psychosocial interventions in six countries; (3) to evaluate what works and provide knowledge translation actions at national, European and international levels. The project adopts an interdisciplinary approach by complementing expertise and longstanding experience of partners. The consortium includes Eurocarers members, research and carers organisations, working together with and for AYCs. AYCs will be continuously involved in the project – together with other stakeholders – via national Blended Learning Networks, user groups, workshops, and in an International Advisory and Ethics Board. The project will have international impact, improving AYCs’ mental health and well-being, educational outcomes, transition, employability and social inclusion, as well as creating evidence-based practices, to improve health equity and societal benefits.