Children and Youth 2025 winners: MYTIME Young Carers
Why it won
- Innovation: The charity pivoted from providing activities for young carers to helping schools to identify and support the young carers in their midst.
- Effectiveness: The programme has significantly increased the numbers of young carers identified, and the attendance and educational attainment of those pupils has substantially improved.
- Scalability: Adapting the programme as a hybrid model with an online element allows the programme to be rolled out to many more schools.
MYTIME believes that no child’s destiny should be defined by their beginning, so aims to provide young carers, aged five to 25, with the opportunities, friendship and support every young person deserves.
A recent Carers’ Trust report indicates that 10-13% of the pupil population could have caring roles, equating to approximately three in every classroom and an estimated one million young carers nationally. Yet too many remain hidden and unsupported, and face significant social, academic and economic disadvantages as a result.
Before 2019, Dorset-based MYTIME had predominantly focused on providing fun-filled activity days for young carers but since then it has developed an innovative Level Up programme, which works closely with local schools and colleges to help identify unknown young carers. It then equips these educational settings with the understanding, tools and strategies necessary for them to offer academic and emotional support to the students.
A year ago, MYTIME also launched the Level Up Academy – a national spin-off from the local programme. Involving national academy chains such as United Learning and Creative Education Trust, it provides a hybrid model of delivery, allowing access to an online platform to train school staff.
Although currently 72% of UK schools are still unaware they have any young carers, MYTIME has witnessed a 375% increase in the number of young carers identified locally through its programme. It now works with almost 260 schools nationwide and has trained an estimated 4,000 staff, raised awareness among approximately 50,000 students and identified almost 3,000 previously hidden and unsupported young carers.
Last year, before training, only 34% of staff surveyed felt confident to identify young carers and 27% able to support them. However, afterwards, these figures had risen to 97% and 99.3% respectively.
MYTIME recently secured a commitment from Lord Lucas that he will table an amendment to the children and wellbeing bill to ensure that young carers are included in its provisions.
The charity is also working with Social Finance on an initiative to collate and share the good practice that is going on in different areas of the country with regard to supporting young carers.
Charity Awards judge Farah Nazeer said the outcomes reported by MYTIME were “profoundly impactful” in areas such as the numbers of young carers identified, their school attendance once they were given support, and their educational attainment. She commended the way that the organisation pivoted from putting on events for young people to a much more sustainable and impactful model of supporting schools to identify the young carers and putting in place tools and services to help them succeed.
Judge Gemma Gooch, head of charities distribution at Rathbones, described MYTIME as a “trailblazing charity that has identified a huge, largely unknown problem and created long-term systemic change and educational advancement for so many young carers across the UK”.
CC Reg. no. 297481
Highly Commended
Delight Charity
Delight’s joyful and inclusive visual arts, dance, drama and storytelling programmes are a catalyst for long-term change for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Following a “wow” experience such as an in-school performance by a theatre or dance company, children are immersed in weekly creative workshops led by Delight’s arts partners and the pupils’ class teachers, culminating in a showcase performance. Independently verified evaluation demonstrates that the project increases children’s confidence and learning engagement, particularly among children with special educational needs and those that qualify for pupil premium. The charity also leaves schools equipped with the knowledge and materials to continue providing the programme.
Spark Inside
When Spark Inside started in 2012, the reoffending figure for young prisoners serving short sentences was 75%. Since then, Spark’s innovative life-coaching programmes – delivered through group workshops followed by one-to-one coaching sessions – have had a proven positive impact on those taking part. The concept of the Hero’s Journey is that we are all heroes, with challenges to overcome and adventures to face. Programmes tailored to specific cohorts, such as Black Hero’s Journey, addresses the unique challenges faced by young Black men in prison. Spark has so far engaged over 1,300 young people, and recent evaluation shows that fewer participants reoffend compared to a matched control group.
