The costs of care/the benefits of care: a precarious balance? Considering the case of young carers
Bettina Cass and Ciara Smyth
Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW
Contact Email:   c.smythunsw.edu.au

A major research strand on young carers focuses on the costs incurred by children and young people who provide informal care for a family member who has a disability, long-term health condition or is elderly. These costs include early school leaving, reduced participation in post-secondary education, training and employment, reduction of future income. Caring responsibilities reduce participation in friendship networks, social and recreational activities, with implications for social connectedness, health and well-being. Another research strand highlights the benefits of young peoples’ care-giving: the acquisition of caring skills; maintaining 'at home' care for disabled or seriously ill family members; contributing to the integrity and resilience of families and reducing the costs of residential care. This paper will analyse the international literature on young carers and draw on focus group fieldwork to explore these two sides of the caring coin. The paper will also highlight a number of important policy issues: what are the family circumstances and policy settings in which children and young people undertake informal caring? How might the nature and intensity of care be altered under different policy frameworks, so that a young person’s normative ethic of ‘caring about’ need not be extended into responsibility for ‘taking care of’?

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