This method unfortunately proved unsuccessful in generating respondents and all but three respondents were contacted through the young carers’ projects. It may have proved more useful if the researchers had perhaps targeted schools, healthcare agencies and welfare agencies in person rather that sending information packs as postal information can often be lost, misdirected or prevented from reaching its intended target group by administrative staff. They may have been able to contact schools and welfare agencies by telephone to arrange a date and time to visit the establishments personally and perhaps explain the nature of the project and invite young people to talk to them on a one to one basis once the initial presentation was over. They could also have left contact details on notice boards or with staff members so that the young people could make contact with the researchers in their own time.
The sample group identified were also of one socio-economic group, low-income families who were dependent on welfare benefits. The paper claims that this is because of where the young carers’ projects were located, but makes no mention of the fact that families who may have been in a more affluent position, may have perhaps been able to access better caring services for themselves because they could pay for them and therefore, did not have to rely on their children to provide care for them. It does mention however, that wider social problems and needs may have been highlighted as a result of a different social mix, but that there was no evidence to support this.
The paper states that the researchers identified and interviewed twenty-one young carers’, thirteen girls and eight boys aged between 9 and 18. The average age was 14. However, the paper then becomes a little confusing as it talks about interviewing twenty seven young carers’ in total, but does not offer an explanation on where the other six originated from other than ‘focus groups’ which had been set up. A good profile of the respondents is offered with the emphasis on whether they supported their parents in a primary (directly) role or a secondary (supporting the primary carer) capacity.
The researchers used an observational technique in order to develop questions for individual interviews and to help in recruiting young people. They visited the young carers’ projects on a number of occasions in order to become familiar faces and to gather information on the project itself. Silverman (1997:9), states that such observations are held only to be appropriate at a preliminary or exploratory stage of research as it is in this case as observation is not seen as a ‘reliable’ method of research because different observers may record different observations (ibid).
In the focus groups, the researchers were careful to make participation completely voluntary so as not to force people to have to ‘opt out’ as this may have been awkward for the young person. Researchers were also sensitive to young peoples wish to keep their situation anonymous in inviting them to talk about their situations in the ‘third person’ and the notion of the ‘wish box’ to enable young people to write down their feelings and wishes without fear of being identified through their answers.
The focus groups were useful for the researchers and led to the second stage of the research which involved individual interviews. Although the use of direct questioning techniques and activity based materials is mentioned, it might have been useful to include a sample of the questions that were asked of the respondents in the direct questioning sessions. The findings have been presented to the reader, but no evidence of what was asked of them is included. The research merely offers a description of the methods used to get information from the young people. However, there appears to have been a lot of room for the young person to speak freely about their situation with the researchers so that the findings were presented in the words of the young people themselves. Silverman (1997:91) describes a process of interactionism in which interviewees are viewed as experiencing subjects who actively construct their social worlds. Therefore, the main aim is to generate data which gives a realistic insight into people’s experiences. Silverman describes that the main ways of doing this are to conduct un-structured and open ended interviews which are based upon prior, in-depth participant observation.
The importance of consent is highlighted and the rights of the young people to withdraw from any stage of the research at any time, they were also able to influence how the interviews were conducted and recorded. With this information, I have had to assume, that this means that the young person was able to specify where the interview took place and how it was transcribed as this information was not volunteered in the paper. The rights of young people to choice, however seems to have been a paramount consideration of the researchers, and probably influenced the quality of information that they were able to collect. The more comfortable a participant was in their surroundings may have made it easier for them to talk freely about their experiences. In addition to the importance of consent, the issue of distress was also discussed with participants before they took part in their individual interview, however, how this issue was addressed is not clear and it may have been useful to offer a brief explanation of how the issue was tackled.
The roles and activities that young carers’ carry out was not addressed in the Thomas et al research as in the case of previous research such as the quantitative study conducted by the Centre for Child and Family Research (CCFR) between 1995 and 1997. This study highlighted the roles that young people carried out for the people that they were caring for from basic domestic chores, to personal care tasks. In the Thomas et al research, it may have been useful for the reader to have an idea of the kind of tasks that young carers’ are undertaking. It doesn’t appear that this question had been asked when the researchers questioned the young people in their individual interviews (Dearden and Becker, 2002).
The CCFR paper offers a quantitative analysis of young carers’ that highlights issues of gender, race and lone parent households that were not fully addressed in the Thomas et al research, although it was the intention of the Thomas et al paper to idealistically consider issues of age, gender, ethnic identity and language. The information packs that were sent out were written in both English and Welsh as the study was conducted in Wales However, the only reference to ethnicity in the paper is that ‘two boys and four girls came from ethnic minority families. There is one reference to a language difficulty in the findings where the young carers’ were acting as interpreters for their mother. It addressed the issue that health professionals did not listen to what the young people had to say even though they were the speakers for their mother, but does not expand on these difficulties nor does the paper offer any real solutions to the problem. Therefore the issues of race, ethnicity and language have not been effectively addressed.
In the findings, issues of the recognition of young carers’, education, the health service, friendships and emotional impact and the concept of role reversal (where young people take on the role of ‘parents’) are all highlighted as negative aspects of caring. There is a short piece on the positive aspects of being a young carer in which some young carers’ identified that such responsibilities made them value family life and one boy thought that it would help to prepare him for independence when he eventually left home, but the findings concentrate largely on the negative aspects of caring, what could go wrong and how the young carers’ have been ‘let down’ by professionals. This raises the question of whether or not there were any questions asked which could have invoked a positive response from the participants. Were all of the questions centred on negative aspects of caring so that a fairly glum picture of what life was like for young carers was painted? Was this the true aim of the research?
The work of the Young Carers’ projects was praised by the young carers’ themselves, but the researchers recognised that they were not a perfect solution to the problem as they were often under-resourced and had staffing problems. However, it does need to be noted that the areas in which the young carers’ projects were, were areas where there was high unemployment and where many people relied on welfare benefits and so economically the areas were poor in any case. It is therefore unfair to say that ‘projects are under-resourced’ as the projects throughout the country as a whole cannot be fairly represented in this particular study. However, if they had referred to other research which had been conducted they could have backed up their argument. Dearden and Becker (2002) have raised the problem of funding in their research for the CCFR and have described the problems that young carers’ projects face in relation to finance and this research could have strengthened their argument.
The generalisations that have been made however are not accurately reflective of young carers’ situations countrywide and this is noted in the research paper. This is because of the small number of participants. If this was the case, why was the research continued? What relevance do the results have beyond the situation investigated? Should the design and methodology perhaps have been revised in order to try and accurately reflect young carers’ situations? After all, that was one of the aims of research and if the authors could not ‘…generalise with any confidence about how the impact [of caring] may vary…’ (Thomas et al, 2002), then the very submission of the research to the commissioners and the publication of it appears pointless and it does not address the needs and experiences of young carers’ fairly.
In the discussion that follows the analysis of the research data, the concept of whether or not it is right for young people to be undertaking caring responsibilities is addressed but the paper offers no real solutions to the problem other than asking the question of whether or not further service provision and support should be made available to the people who are in need of care by the relevant agencies such as Social Services. The discussion addresses the fact that services offered to young carers should be a multi-agency responsibility and that families as a whole should be included when services for young carers’ are being planned. The legal responsibilities of Local Authorities are highlighted and then the authors suggest that the primary responsibility for the provision of services for young carers and their families lies with Social Services.
An argument develops in the conclusion about the kind of childhood that we in a westernised society, think that children should have and whether or not the extra responsibilities that ‘young carers’’ are undertaking, are denying them the chance of a ‘normal’ childhood and hindering their development. The argument becomes largely political and refers to a number of other research articles relating to child development. The voice of the respondents becomes lost in the conclusion as it argues between the rights and wrongs of young people caring for adults but the research highlights the fact that many of the respondents that they spoke to, were in unacceptable situations with little support from outside agencies and a lack of understanding from others.
The result of the research is a new, apparently more inclusive definition of what a young carer is which includes young people who are ‘secondary’ carers who undertake domestic duties as a result of an adults need for care. The definition identifies that a young carer ‘…is a child or young person who is in need of specific services [due to caring responsibilities]…’ but then does not specify what those services might be! However, one useful aspect of the new definition is that it includes people who care on a regular or on an occasional basis.
A part of the conclusion which I find quite amusing, is where the authors state that ‘the poor response from education, health and welfare organisations to our attempt to contact young carers…indicate a need for awareness and training’. Perhaps the authors need to look at their methods for contacting such agencies before making such statements.
Again, in the conclusion, recommendations are made for social services and related agencies to take a more proactive approach to dealing with and providing services for children and families in such situations. Perhaps this message is revisited in order for the commissioners of the research to look at further funding and training for social work staff within their Local Authorities.
An argument in favour of qualitative research such as this is that qualitative research should be the preferred approach in social work research because it has a natural synergy with the processes of practice (Gould, 2003). Such research has many similarities with social work itself; the focus on how participants construe their world fits with the social work injunction to start where the client is; the contextualisation of data fits with the social work emphasis on understanding the person within their environment; ‘thick’ description of individual case studies is parallel to the social work individualisation of social work processes of assessment and intervention; grounded theory uses both deductive and inductive reasoning in the same way that social work synthesises research-based knowledge and practice wisdom; both social workers and qualitative researchers use processes of constant comparison and analytic induction to construct, test and modify hypotheses; both take place in naturalistic settings, use similar methods of data collection such as observation and interviewing and involve maintaining a balance between empathy and analytic detachment.
Although this piece of research on young carers’ may not have achieved a great deal alone, its’ readers will almost certainly be people working or who have an interest in the social care field. Therefore, if the messages from the conclusions of the research article are understood and acted upon by social work departments and professionals alone, then those whom the research aimed to identify can be helped.
Bibliography
Adams, R et al (2002), Social Work Themes Issues and Critical Debates (second edition), Open University Press
Dearden, C and Becker, S (2002), Young Carers Projects, Evidence Issue 4, CCFR
Dearden, C and Becker, S (2003) statistical Profiles of Young Carers’, Evidence Issue 3, CCFR
Gould, N (2002), Qualitative Research And The Development Of Best Attainable Knowledge In Social Work, University of Bath
Nichols, P (1990), Social Survey Methods, Unicef
Pierson, J and Thomas, M (2002), Dictionary of Social Work, Harper Collins Publishing
Silverman, D (1997), Interpreting Qualitative Data, Sage Publications
Thomas, N et al, (2002), ‘Your Friends Don’t Understand’ Invisibility and unmet need in the lives of young carers’ in Child and Family Social Work, (2003) Blackwell Publishing
