Young carers in Sweden—A pilot study of care activities, view of caring, and psychological well‐being

Abstract

Children who have parents with any kind of illness may become young carers who take a responsibility not expected of children for household tasks, or personal or emotional care for parents and siblings. So far, little is known about children in Sweden who are at risk of becoming young carers. The aim of this article is therefore to explore the extent and impact of children's caring activities as reported in a pilot study by a sample of children in Sweden. A number of international questionnaires measuring the amount of caring activities, impact of caring, quality of life, and psychological well‐being were translated and combined into a survey. The pilot survey was completed by 30 children 10–18 years of age. Also, when completing the survey, the children were interviewed concerning their experiences of caregiving. The participants report on a group level emotional symptoms such as fear and nervousness above the clinical cut‐off value. They also rate a lower level of caring compared with findings from the United Kingdom, but they report a higher degree of negative impact of caring than young carers in the United Kingdom.

Young Carers Research, Practice and Policy: An Overview and Critical Perspective on Possible Future Directions

“…This makes it useful for assessment purposes when used by social workers and health professionals. It has been increasingly used as a survey instrument across different cultures, including the United Kingdom (e.g., Becker and Sempik 2018), Sweden (e.g., Järkestig-Berggren et al 2018), and Switzerland (e.g., .…”

Promoting Mental Health and Well-Being among Adolescent Young Carers in Europe: A Randomized Controlled Trial Protocol

“…It consists of two 10-item subscales (positive and negative outcomes) with adequate internal consistency and expected associations with depressive symptoms [ 105 ]. A Swedish adaptation has been used in previous studies, showing adequate internal consistency [ 6 ]. Finally, perceived social support will be measured using an adapted version of the brief social support questionnaire (SSQ-6) [ 106 ] that includes 3 items asking to indicate the number of support sources and one item asking for global satisfaction with received social support (6-point scale ranging from very dissatisfied to very satisfied), and one multiple-choice ad-hoc question on individuals (i.e., school staff, close family members and close friends) AYCs can count on if in need of support or help.…”

“…Taking on care responsibilities early in life may have considerable negative consequences for young people’s mental and physical health and psychosocial development [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. Caring has especially been linked to stress, anxiety and depression symptoms when occurring in the adolescent phase [ 10 , 11 ], which is remarkable given evidence that most mental health problems that start during adolescence subsequently persist into adulthood [ 12 ].…”

“…Besides the small sample size, objective outcome measures, baseline or long-term follow-up assessment were not applied. These studies, while showing promising results, call for rigorous efficacy studies in Europe that involve larger samples, collect both quantitative and qualitative data, and consider both internal (e.g., mental health and well-being) and external (e.g., social support and school performance and attendance) outcomes [ 6 , 33 , 41 ].…”

Persons with certain functional impairments apply for parenting support: a study of personal assistance assessments in Sweden

“…A study conducted by Gould (1995) showed that few people thought it was likely that children with physically disabled parents would be young carers because of the available resources for this group of parents. However, studies show that young carers do exist and that their problems are not always addressed (Gould 1995;Järkestig Berggren et al 2018;Kallander et al 2018aKallander et al , 2018bNordenfors, Melander, and Daneback 2014).…”