OUR VOICES

ongoing

OUR VOICES focuses its activities on the target group of young carers (hereinafter “YCs”), defined for the purposes of this proposal as children and young people under the age of 18 who provide care for a parent or relative in the community, usually within their own home. YCs are an important target group to focus upon as they face multiple disadvantages. Indeed, YCs have been identified in the “Feasibility Study for the Child Guarantee (2019)” as among those at risk as living in precarious family situations and potentially exposed to several negative impacts, including their mental and physical health, educational opportunities, economic deprivation and whose rights as children are often at risk of being infringed. The support systems in place to aid YCs varies significantly across EU MSs but it is a matter of fact that public policies impacting on YCs intersect with several different policy domains, such as health care, social care, economic support, education, child protection, digital environment, etc. While, potentially, YCs should be actively involved in the decision-making process regarding policies that concern them, in fact across Europe examples of actions aimed to support active participation of YCs in decision making process are very rare. OUR VOICES aims to promote an inclusive and systemic participation of YCs at the local, national and EU levels to ensure that their voices are heard and listened to, especially in policy matters that affect them directly. More specifically, the project, building on a consortium of European organisations working with YCs and referring to the Eurocarers’ network, intends to implement different and coordinated actions aimed to ensure that the pre-conditions for YCs’ active participation are met, that mechanisms supporting YCs’ engagement in policy discussions at different levels are implemented and that strategies to overcome barriers preventing YCs’ participation are piloted and evaluated.