Young carers fear being depicted as a burden on society, Carers NSW says

Extract from ABC News

PM

By Emily Bourke

Updated 44 minutes ago

Photo: Young carers often look after parents with mental illness or disabilities. (Michaela Rehle, file photo: Reuters)

Related Story: $96 million war chest unlocked in bid to tackle welfare cost blowout

Young carers are alarmed by the Government's welfare announcement on Tuesday, and fear they are being depicted as a burden on society, Carers New South Wales says.

Key points:

• Young carers, young parents and students most at risk of welfare dependency
• Young carers are under 25 and look after family or friends with mental illness or disability
• They fear they are being depicted as a burden on society.

The Federal Government unveiled a radical overhaul of the welfare system, designed to break the entrenched cycle of dependency and slash costs.
It is based on research by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which identified young carers as one of the biggest groups of welfare dependents.
The research indicates there are more than 11,000 young carers in Australia, and 16 per cent of them will be on welfare for their entire lives.
In total, this relatively small group of was estimated to cost $5.2 billion over their lifetimes.
Elena Katrakis from Carers NSW said young carers she had spoken to were concerned.

"They're concerned that they're going to be seen as a burden, as a cost to society, whereas you know what, they're actually saving the community a lot of dollars," she said.

Young carers are defined as people under 25 who have to look after parents with dementia or mental illness, or siblings with disabilities.
Ms Katrakis said many young carers were in single parent households.

Video: Meet Lisa: A welfare case study (ABC News)


"So you might have a young person, school age, whose parents have had a relationship breakdown, there's a parent, say the mum, that might have a disability," she said.
"The young person would be there providing some of that support and assistance — emotional support, doing cooking, really running the household on behalf of that parent.
"They just do it. They can do anything from sort of personal care kind of things to medication management, to taking family members and assisting them to doctor's appointments."
Research by Access Economics estimates the hours of care provided by all unpaid carers, not just young carers, would cost more than $60 billion to replace.
Ms Katrakis said a revolutionary approach would be to replace that $60 billion with formalised paid care.
"Now that's not going to happen," she told the ABC's PM program.
"So specifically for young carers, young carers still need support, they need assistance, they need assistance to balance care and support through school.
"Yes it's great to have assistance to get into higher education and employment, absolutely, but not at the cost of not being able to provide that personal care or that personal care and that caring that they are doing is being seen as a negative."

'My career is not in the caring space'

The $96 million plan unveiled by the Social Services Minister Christian Porter on Tuesday will aim to find new ways to break the cycle of welfare dependence in Australia.
It will give NGOs the opportunity to pitch ideas and programs to encourage young carers to get off welfare and into work.

Audio: Listen to Emily Bourke's interview with Elena Katrakis (PM)

"I did hear the Minister say this morning that young people could be perfectly placed to maybe go into roles in a care profession," Ms Katrakis said.
"Now young carers, I was talking to some yesterday and today, have said look, I want to get as far away from caring as possible, my career is not in the caring space.
"So I think there needs to be support to get into whatever profession or career opportunity young people want to get into and if there's added assistance for young people because of their isolation and social disadvantage then fantastic, that's a great thing."
She has also argued when young carers move into new professions, they require replacement support.
"The young carers are not going to give up the caring that they're doing, because they do do it out of love and sometimes family obligation and whatever else, but a paid care worker, unless they're there 24/7 is not going to fill the place of that family member.
"So there needs to be complimentary, yes, possibly paid care and support, but the role that young carers or any carer plays still needs to be valued by society."