Around the Commonwealth: Young carers seek advice and support

Ernest Mwangi, 24, a young carer from Githurai, a town on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, has devoted most of his young life to looking after other people.

“When I was about seven years old, my mum and my dad separated,” he says, recalling how, deserted by his father, he and his mother had to fend for themselves. “My mum was the sole breadwinner, and she was going through depression... some sort of a downfall.”

“My main duties were taking care of her, trying to book hospital appointments, giving her medication and doing household duties. When she had bad days, I had to do the duties by myself. It took about a year for her to recover, but from time to time after that she still had her bad moments.”

A lost childhood

At the age of 14, after finishing school, Ernest decided he wanted to put the years of experience he’d spent looking after his mother to further use, and so found work volunteering for a day care centre for vulnerable children. “From the sort of neighbourhood I come from,” he says, “most people have problems.”

All around the world, young people like Ernest are burdened with the task of caring for siblings, parents, friends and relations. Whether abandoned or orphaned, looking after physically or mentally handicapped parents, or simply shouldering responsibilities borne of poverty, all young carers face similar challenges.

They are, by virtue of restrictions on their time, excluded from the ordinary experiences of childhood - unable to complete homework, or attend school, or even play freely with friends.

In an effort to help other young carers, earlier this year Ernest helped organise a series of four workshops for young carers with the Commonwealth Organisation for Social Work (COSW), an international body set up in 1995 to promote social work activities across Commonwealth countries.

More than 170 young carers aged from seven to 18 attended the day-long workshops in Kenya, organised through the Kenya National Association of Social Workers and with funding from the Commonwealth Foundation.

Practical advice and support

In the company of trained social workers, the children were encouraged to reveal their own experiences of the stigma, neglect and economic, health and social challenges they face from public authorities, schools and local communities alike.

The workshops sought to help enlighten policymakers – including attending representatives from Kenya’s National Disability Council – as well as offer practical advice and support.

“We tried to help them accept their situation,” explains Ernest, who is in London this week to submit a report to the Foundation on the success of the workshops. “[We encouraged them] to come up with solutions which might work for them, and to seek help from social workers.”

Calling on policymakers to give greater recognition to the challenges faced by young carers across the Commonwealth, Ernest’s report calls on governments and organisations to dedicate adequate financial resources and establish social structures and legal systems to help young carers.

“These problems are in no way peculiar to Kenya,” adds Terry Bamford, COSW’s representative in the UK. “Particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, which is so badly affected by HIV/AIDS, there are a huge number of children who are carers.”

“There are two things that we are looking for,” he says, “a policy change in Kenya on the recognition of young carers, but also, more broadly, a policy for the African region as a whole.”