Young carers

A growing body of publications is available on young carers and young adult carers, mostly from the United Kingdom, but an increasing numbers of refereed journal articles from Australia, Europe, and a few other countries, including the African continent, are now discussing the issue of young carers. Becker 2007 provides the only article, as of the early 21st century, that looks at young carers in cross-national perspective and reviews the level of awareness in different countries, suggesting reasons why there is considerable variation but also some overlap in country responses. As of the early 21st century, only a couple of textbooks are available on young carers because the field is relatively new and very few academics are heavily engaged in researching in this area. Nonetheless, the earliest textbook by Becker, et al. 1998 deserves to be examined as many of the themes within it have been replicated over the last fifteen years by other researchers and practitioners. Most publications in this field are refereed journal articles, but a significant number of shorter items have been published in practitioner journals. Such practitioner articles are not cited here because they are often anecdotal in nature and, in most cases, have not been subjected to rigorous peer review.