Data and young carers: our lockdown story

Much of the support over this lockdown period has focussed on older, more vulnerable people — those over 70 and with long term health conditions. Of course this was right, yet our data shows that young carers have also struggled.

Our experiences suggest this could be as previously they had school to take them away from their caring situation. With lockdown, they were faced with the challenges of caring 24–7, alongside the fact they could no longer see friends or wider family and support networks. Given limited resources and not being able to meet face to face, how could we respond effectively for young carers?

Our young carers team, like other young carer teams we know, does appear to be powered like Duracell bunnies, so they responded to each of our 3 priority areas outlined here with energy and enthusiasm. This post looks at how they sought to provide advice and reassurance in a way that was helpful to young carers and their families and what this has taught them along the way.

Quick, clear communications was seen as key to keeping families up to date. We have email addresses for 75% of young carers and many are connected to us on social media. Digital only communication would have been cheaper and easier, but that would leave 25% of young carers with no contact. So, a hybrid model was adopted. A letter was posted to all families providing support information and specifically a link to a new Coronavirus Hub page for young carers on our website. Initially a web page was seen as the best place for information as it could be updated to keep up with the fast pace of change.

Looking at our analytics, there was a spike in views of this webpage after the letter was sent. Which is great! However if we’re going to be honest, we looked at this in retrospect. One thing we’ve learned is we don’t use or understand data as well as we could. Google Analytics can feel to the uninitiated like it’s written in another language. In many ways it is! We need to get better at is analysing our data, particularly our digital data, to give us insights as to where we are doing well and what we could do better.

As lockdown continued, the pace of new information coming out for young people was incredible. Resources for home schooling; activity; emotional wellbeing. Yet for families coping with someone who has additional needs, be that a parent, grandparent or sibling, this could be overwhelming. To respond to this, the team needed to change tack. Instead of updating a webpage which would grow longer by the day, they developed a weekly ebulletin to highlight new information in a quick, simple format, easy to engage and digest.

These ebulletins have been really successful — this is data we do compare and analyse! Open rates are over 50%, considerably higher that industry standard. They have also generated direct feedback from parents grateful for the contact. We’ll continue to monitor this and adjust the regularity as required. With lockdown easing it may be better to send out less frequently, we’ll check with parents to see.

Alongside these comms, the team began wellbeing check-in calls to families, initially to those considered vulnerable and then to the wider list. These proactive calls were vital to our aim of reassuring and supporting all carers. Feedback has proved they have delivered on this aim. And what’s more, they’ve given two really valuable insights we wouldn’t otherwise have had:

• There are many more vulnerable families than originally identified. One reason for this is poor data. The situation of a young carer changes dramatically as they and their families grow. Our records capture a snapshot, with little opportunity for updates. A lot had changed we weren’t aware of. As we develop services moving out of lockdown, how can we ensure our records are continually up to date?
• Young carers are more nervous than we thought around joining activities provided for them. Although this is a known barrier, talking to parents in more depth than normal gave us greater insight. Fear of not knowing other children and stepping in to the unknown mean many young carers are missing out. Our current offer — a chance to come and meet the team in person before joining an activity, isn’t enough. Again — we’ll use this to shape how we might approach activities coming out of lockdown.

As lockdown begins to ease, the team are continuing to provide support and reassurance, particularly to families who are shielding. Looking to the future, we want to develop our service based on what we’ve learned. Data from the wellbeing calls has proved so much more valuable than we could have known, and underlines why we’re seeking to be more data informed as an organisation. We’d love to hear from others on this journey too!