Care Community. Autonomy. Responsibility. Empowerment.
CARE is a platform built for enabling Young Carers.
According to Census data, there are 150,000 unpaid carers aged between 15-25 years old. A young carer can likely find themselves in their situation without any control, looking after a close relative or friend, with a range of disabilities.
These young carers are statistically likely to spend their entire lives caring for their dependant. Using ACT Government data to estimate the average care timeframes, showed a commitment by carers between 20 – 50 years.
Because of factors like these, and the isolation they face with often 24/7 care of their dependant, these carers likely never get the chance to socialise and make friends with others in their age group. This leads to merely 10% of carers finding a life partner.
ACT Carers Payments and Allowance Recipients
In our investigations, we were told that young carers often felt like they were not living the lives they wanted to. These young carers aren’t doing this work for themselves. These brave individuals are accepting responsibility within our community. We think the rest of us have to accept the responsibility of helping them live a normal life and achieve their goals.
To achieve this, we began our investigations into the data that existed around young carers. This included discovering that of the 150,000 carers, only 20,000 of them were actively involved in or benefited from government funded assistance programs (such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme) of which they were entitled to. Analysis of NDIS enrolments show that difficult cases, such as spinal cord injuries are on the rise in the ACT.
Of the data that exists, we concluded that there was a large gap - and hence a large potential to capture more exhaustive and qualitative datasets. We saw that potential in collecting information on how NDIS allowances were used, referencing where the young carers were located, and the health outcomes of the carers and their dependant.
In order to help young carers, whilst at the same time giving government organisations more visibility of their lives, we created “CARE”, a service that removes all the painful administrative work, and allows young carers to focus on their roles and meet others nearby who are in similar situations to themselves.
Rate of enrolment growth ACT - National