Enhancing young carer support: optimising the Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool Intervention (CSNAT-I) for use with Young Carers (CSNAT-I-YC)

Many young people (known as young carers) support family members with on-going health conditions, but with negative impacts on their own health, education and wellbeing. People who support young carers (e.g., support workers and school nurses) can help by asking them what might help them carry out, or reduce, their caring role. However, these conversations can be difficult for young carers.

Background 

Many young people support family members with on-going health conditions. These young people (known as young carers) help family members in many ways. This can include providing physical care, running the household, and looking after other children. Young carers can miss out on their childhood. Many also experience their own health problems and fall behind at school. People who support young carers (e.g., support workers and school nurses) can help by asking them what might help them carry out, or reduce, their caring role. However, these conversations can be difficult for young carers. We need ways (interventions) to help open-up these conversations with young carers.

There is an existing intervention that has been shown to help adult carers to identify, and discuss, the help they need. It is called the Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool Intervention(CSNAT-I). It consists of:

  • the ‘About You’ Booklet (which contains a short set of questions to help carers consider their support needs)
  • a conversation between the carer and professional, based on the carer's responses to the questions.

This intervention is used internationally with adult carers. To find out if it could help young carers we have looked at research that has explored young carers’ needs and found some differences between young and adult carers’ needs. This suggests that the ‘About You’ Booklet’s questions need adapting for young carers.

We also talked to young carers and people who work with them. Both groups felt the questions in the booklet could be useful for young carers, but that some of the wording and content needed changing. They also thought it important to think about who should use the intervention with young carers, and where.

Project Aims

The project aimed to explore adapting CSNAT-I for young carers by adapting the ‘About You’ Booklet and exploring how the whole intervention could work with, and for, young carers.

Project Activity

To achieve the study aims:

  • Updated the existing systematic search and narrative literature review mapping young carers support needs (from the published literature) to the ‘About You’ Booklet questions to establish its comprehensiveness for young carers.
  • Consulted young carer groups (PPI work) and leaders on the need to, a mechanism for, adapting the ‘About You’ Booklet questions.

Consulted young carer groups (PPI work) and leaders on the need to, a mechanism for, adapting the intervention.

Anticipated or actual outputs 

  • Submission of the systematic search and narrative review for publication
  • Presentations to relevant groups
  • Development of a proposal to adapt the ‘About You’ booklet questions and adapt the intervention for use with young carers

Potential impacts

This work will enable the follow-on empirical project to achieve impact through:

  • Supporting young carer agency by enabling their views about their caring role, and related support needs, to be heard
  • Enabling cross-sector delivery of a comprehensive, person-centred approach to identifying the support needs of young carers
  • Improved experiences and outcomes for young carers and their families
  • Contribution to the mitigation of inequalities present among young carers in comparison to their peers
  • Enhanced safeguarding of young carers by helping to identify and address inappropriate caring roles
  • Contribution to addressing the aims of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Young Carers and Young Adult Carers and NHS guidance for young carers
  • Reducing health and social care interventions by optimising decisions about young carers service use, thereby reducing unnecessary burden on some services and mitigating the need for future interventions

Papers/resources 

Click here to view the The Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool Intervention (CSNAT-I) website

Who was involved?

Joint PIs: 

Contact

M.Farquhar@uea.ac.uk