Young Carers Development Trust (YCDT) is delighted to announce that we have received a £10,000 grant from the St. James’s Place Charitable Foundation, to support the salary of our Service Manager Georgia Prentice, who oversees YCDT’s Long-Term Mentoring Programme.
This funding will help ensure the continued delivery and effective management of our long-term support for young carers across the South West. YCDT works with young people aged 14–19 who care for a parent or sibling with serious illness, disability, mental ill-health or addiction — often alongside managing school, college, work, and their own wellbeing.
Our Long-Term Mentoring Programme provides tailored 1:1 support over several years, pairing each young carer with a trained volunteer Development Mentor. The Service Manager plays a crucial role in overseeing safeguarding, mentor support and supervision, programme quality, and partnership working, ensuring young carers receive consistent, high-quality support at key transition points in their lives.
Thanks to this structured, long-term approach, 100% of the young carers supported by YCDT are engaged in Education, Employment or Training, with many progressing into further or higher education — outcomes that are often out of reach for young people with significant caring responsibilities.
One young carer, Cory, reflects on the impact of YCDT’s long-term support:
“Being involved with YCDT has been monumental. When I joined, my school was predicting I would only get two GCSEs. Through their support, I’m now at university studying History. Improving in education helps everywhere else in life because you get the confidence to try more things.”
The grant from St. James’s Place Charitable Foundation will help YCDT continue supporting young carers like Cory, ensuring that caring responsibilities do not define or limit their futures.
We are extremely grateful to the Trustees of St. James’s Place Charitable Foundation for their generosity and belief in our work, and we look forward to sharing updates on the impact of this support over the coming year.
