The project
Our aim
TOGETHER project aims to support social inclusion and engagement of young carers in Germany, Italy, Greece and UK by helping young carers and professionals to adopt a whole family approach, where: members of the household (including the care-recipient) are encouraged to communicate openly about the illness and caring; the condition of the
care-recipients are explained clearly to the younger members of the family; helping relationship building within the family; professionals are encouraged to take a whole-family approach
when working with care-recipients.
Our ultimate goal is to have an impact on families where there are caring responsibilities and where there is a young member, in order to prevent / reduce negative impacts on him/her, as well as improving his/her well-being, social inclusion and community engagement.
Download the project leaflets
The TOGETHER project intends to reach these aims
by developing, testing and disseminating
three intellectual outputs:
Awareness rising material
to inform children and adults about how important is to cooperate and be supportive with each other when there is a caring responsibility in the family
A training workshop curriculum
for young carers and their families, to support the creation of an open dialogue about the illness / condition of the care recipient, the impact on the young persons and how the whole family can respond to this.
e-learning programme
for professionals about how to promote a whole family approach for young carers and how to replicate the workshop previously
elaborated.
Our previous projects on Young Carers
The project is complementary to other projects on young carers carried out by the partnership. For example to the Grundtvig Partnership “Together for Young Adult Carers/TOYAC” and Erasmus+ EPYC, projects promoted by some of the organizations that are now partners in this project. TOYAC facilitated the exchange of knowledge on how to support young carers in transition to further education and employment. The TOYAC project gave participants the chance to visit each other’s organizations, to learn more about national contexts, to hear the needs of young carers from different local contexts and to get to know some of the tools and practices in use in the different countries. As a result of this intervention, the partnership learnt that practices across Europe on supporting young carers vary considerably, as does the level of attention to the issue by practitioners and other stakeholders. EPYC was focused on creating tools and methods for youth workers to recognise the needs of young carers and support them. However, the same project clearly showed that young carers can best be supported when the whole family is on board, as when this is not happening it is challenging for youth and social workers to engage young carers in meaningful activities and support programmes. TOGETHER results therefore to be complementary but at the same time innovative compared to the other projects carried out by the partnership.