Young adult carers are young people, aged 16-24, who provide unpaid care to a family member on a regular basis. Evidence shows that caring responsibilities can have a significant impact upon young people’s outcomes in education and employment and affect their long-term life chances.
L&W estimate that young adult carers provide over £3.5 billion of unpaid care per year. Despite this, on average they achieve 9 lower GCSE grades than their peers, they are five times more likely to drop out of college, and they are 38% less likely to achieve a degree qualification. However, these outcomes are not inevitable.
Young adult carers deserve to go as far as their talent and hard work will take them, yet our work and wider research shows that they often don’t feel supported to go to university. We want to break down barriers to HE and ensure that young adult carers have the same opportunities to go to university, and achieve their potential, as other young people.
Between 2019 and 2022, our Driving Change in Further Education (FE) project, in partnership with Carers Federation (CF), worked with 39 colleges and college groups to improve and embed their support for young adult carers using the Quality Standard in Carer Support (QSCS) Framework.
