Many Canadian youth are caregivers: U of A researcher

27 per cent of Canadians aged 14 to 19 caring for someone with an illness

EDMONTON — More than a quarter of Canadian youth are caregivers, something that a University of Alberta researcher says is limiting their ability to excel in school or in the workplace.

According to a study by U of A family economist Janet Fast, 27 per cent of Canadians aged 14–19 provide care to someone living with illness, disability or aging — equivalent to nearly 600,000 youth nationwide.

The study looks at Canada’s 10 provinces and is based on 2012 Statistics Canada data.

“A lot of (the young caregivers) are caring for grandparents, which is much less common among adult caregivers, of course. And many of them live in the same household as the grandparents they’re caring for,” Fast said. “But they’re also subject to the same kinds of consequences, of negative outcomes, as other caregivers, and then some.”

Those impacts can include feelings of stress that come alongside juggling being a student and doing paid work with the unpaid labour of caregiving. Fast said that many of these youth report that caregiving affects academics, with 15 per cent saying their studies were impacted.

Fast also highlighted that over 40 per cent of young caregivers started before they turned 15, and that 11 per cent of young caregivers looked after four or more people in the past year.

Sarah Hunter is a board member at Caregivers Alberta. As a preteen, she started caring for her mother, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

She had to learn how to do tasks like giving her mom injections or flushing her IV line.

“When you’re growing up, it’s hard, because most of your friends aren’t going through anything like that and you don’t know where to go,” Hunter said. “You definitely grow up a little faster, I think.”

Hunter said it would have been nice to have someone her own age to talk with, given that her friends didn’t share the experience of caring for a disabled parent.

Fast says awareness is one of the biggest issues for young caregivers.

“We as a society need to recognize that caregiving is not limited to adults who have a lot of control or have more resources,” she said. “I think this population of caregivers is kind of hidden. I don’t think people really think of 15-year-olds as being caregivers.”

She also said she would like to see schools provide more supports for students balancing caregiving with their studies.