A new initiative launched earlier this year aims to promote the well-being of young caregivers throughout their school career.
We hope to promote the recognition of these young people in their role as caregivers and to involve them in the search for solutions to meet their accommodation needs.
“We decided to focus on that because we realized (that the young person) is even more invisible than the majority of caregivers,” explained Nathalie Déziel, the director of the Regroupement des caregiveres et caregivers. Natural Resources of Montreal (RAANM).
It is estimated that three young people per class are caregivers in Canada, but the initiatives in place to help them are rare in schools.
The initiative is currently aimed at young people aged 16 and over due to legal issues affecting work with younger children, even if some testimonies report young people as young as six years old playing a role caregiver.
The initiative was tested in six schools in the Montreal region and has already reached hundreds of young people. The first step was to provide training to school staff, and more specifically to support staff. Kiosks were then set up at the start of the school year to discuss caregiving with the young people themselves.
Discussion groups will now be organized to better target the resources that young caregivers need to reconcile their role as caregiver and their educational career.
“We really want to try to facilitate their educational journey to reduce school dropouts. […], reduce the impacts on their academic career, said Ms. Déziel. We want there to be accommodating measures with the school to allow these young people to be able to fully experience their school career, despite the fact that they have a close supportive relationship. »
The objective, she added, is to discuss with young people “what they are experiencing and to think together about what the school could put in place to accommodate caregivers as much as possible according to their situation. . The idea is that it comes from them.”
Meetings with teaching staff immediately raised a few ideas. We therefore discussed the allocation of a special code to young caregivers to enable them to be identified quickly; the teacher would then know that a young person in his group needs a little more latitude in submitting work, or that he needs to have his cell phone on his desk at all times.
The measures put in place so far have already made it possible to identify certain young caregivers who had not necessarily understood that they played this role, and therefore to make them a little less “invisible”.
“Basically, being a young caregiver is a strength,” concluded Ms. Déziel. It equips you in kindness, in empathy, in taking care of others… There are lots of beautiful things that can emerge from that, but we say that we should equip (young people) a little, raise their awareness, support them a little more to allow all this to develop in full emancipation with their own lives. »
The RAANM has put a new video clip online to help young caregivers recognize and identify themselves. The capsule encourages young people in particular to share their experience; it also aims to break isolation and encourage mutual aid and the exchange of information on the resources available in their community.
The Foundation of the Federation of Specialist Physicians of Quebec financially supports the RAANM in carrying out this project to the tune of $67,000. This support will be dedicated to awareness-raising activities and the participation of young people in the project.