County has 6,000 young carers 'unaccounted for'

Luna says teachers and her peers at school sometimes found it hard to understand why she was distracted, or could not spend time with them

An organisation dedicated to supporting young carers has said there are about 6,000 youngsters looking after others who are unaccounted for in Gloucestershire.

Gloucestershire Young Carers (GYC) said it has engaged with more than 1,000 young carers in the county but national figures suggest there are 7,000 overall.

To reduce the number of potentially unsupported young carers, the charity held a conference in Cheltenham last week, to help the "whole county become young-carer aware".

Young carer Luna, 16, who cared for her mother while she was in primary school, said it was "such a big support" to meet and know people with similar experiences as her through GYC.

'Hard to understand'

On a good day, Luna said she would need to look after her mother for an hour or two, but on "down days", she needed to be at home all day.

"It was a lot harder to explain to other peers what I'm going through because it's quite hard to understand at that age," she told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.

"I tended to struggle quite a lot in lessons, sometimes I'd find it hard to concentrate as much, or I wouldn't be able to go and spend time with friends and sometimes people wouldn't be able to understand why."

The conference was curated by more than 20 young carers

While Luna says the friends she has made through GYC "all have different stories", they "have a similar idea" of what her day-to-day life is like.

Hana Gill, director of GYC, wants Gloucestershire to be "a beacon of best practice".

"We're already doing really well as a county, but we want to make sure there's no wrong doors for any young carer," Ms Gill said.

Cheryl Rhodes, chief executive of GYC, said every school in Gloucestershire now had someone responsible for young carers.

"We need to try and make sure lots of other organisations, agencies, and professionals are much more tuned into looking out for that young person and then we're in a position to go in and do an assessment," she said.

"Then our focus is very much on the young carer."