Saoirse Hayden (19) is a young adult carer to her two siblings, aged 17 and 12, who both have autism.
Her brother has several complex mental health issues and is prone to acting violently in moments of distress.
“A lot of very serious violence was directed towards me and my younger sister,” Hayden said. “Very little was done. We were always told we never met the threshold for risk in the house, even though the violence we faced was excessive.
“There were times when he tried to take my life, by his own admission; that’s what he said he was trying to do. This isn’t me trying to say he’s a bad person. I don’t think that at all. I love my brother but he received no support and his issues bubbled up and up, and violence was the way it came out.”
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Hayden, from Co Leitrim, drew attention to the reality for a largely unrecognised demographic at Ireland’s first National Young Carers Conference, which took place at University College Dublin on Saturday.
She co-organised the event with another young adult carer, Shannika Greene (20), who lives in Co Roscommon and has five siblings with additional needs.
“This is a topic that is so close to our hearts and it’s really important to speak about it,” Greene said. “Young carers’ lives are affected hugely. Whether that’s emotionally, financially, mentally, they just take on huge responsibilities.”
Greene said she hoped the event would spread awareness of the term ‘young carer’ and encourage people to identify with it. She said she wanted to see increased supports in schools and youth services for people whose family members have additional needs.
Young carers are 18-years-old and younger, while those aged between 18 and 24 are generally recognised as young adult carers.
“I think young carers are overshadowed so much by the issues that their siblings or parents or relatives face, that they kind of get lost in the business of the family,” Hayden said. “There’s already so much responsibility on everyone in the family that they kind of get lost within that, and they got lost within the services as well.”
President Catherine Connolly addressed the conference before it got under way, pledging to stand in solidarity with young carers. She said “a society cannot function without their contribution”.
“As we know, there are over half a million family carers in Ireland, over half of whom are balancing care with paid employment,” Connolly said.
She added that issues affecting carers can relate to “the emotional and physical strain of caring, the burnout, the depression, the anxiety and isolation”, as well as “the lack of support services and the difficulty in navigating complex healthcare systems”.
Family carers save the State billions by contributing millions of hours of hours of unpaid work every week, the President added.
Cara Darmody, a 15-year-old disability rights activist, was the master of ceremonies for the conference, and Connolly remarked that she must have been the youngest ever MC at a formal event of this nature in Ireland.
The conference was also attended by the Ombudsman for Children, Dr Niall Muldoon and was supported by Léargas, a European Union education and funding programme.
