Young Carer Grant - interim evaluation: qualitative research (Annex A)

Chapter 2: Methodology

Aims of this research

This qualitative research is one strand of a wider programme of evaluative research to assess the early impact of Young Carer Grant. The overarching aim of this research was to explore and understand the experience of, and impact of, Young Carer Grant for those who received it in the first 18 months of the benefit. However, within this there were additional aims, such as exploring barriers to applying for Young Carer Grant and the impact of the 'one carer rule'.

Specifically, the aims of this research were to gather evidence on:

• 1. How Young Carer Grant has been spent or how clients intend to spend the payment

• 2. The impact of Young Carer Grant on the ability of young carers to engage in opportunities that are the norm for their non-caring peers and which they might not have been able to do otherwise

• 3. The impact of Young Carer Grant on the quality of lives of young carers (focussing on mental health and wellbeing)

• 4. The impact of Young Carer Grant on carer's sense of choice and control over their lives

• 5. The impact of Young Carer Grant on carer's feeling of recognition for the role that they provide

• 6. Key barriers to applying for, or receiving, Young Carer Grant

• 7. The experience of the policy rule that only one young carer can access Young Carer Grant for a single cared-for person regardless of the fact that multiple carers may share caring responsibilities

• 8. Any implications of research findings for policy development of Young Carer Grant.

Data collection and analysis

Fieldwork

This research project is qualitative in nature and is based on 22 in-depth interviews with young carers (20 of whom were recipients of Young Carer Grant) and six interviews with stakeholders. Interviews lasted between 45 minutes and one hour and were conducted via telephone or Zoom between 14^th December 2020 and 26^th February 2021.

Interviews were semi-structured and based on a discussion guide to allow interviewers to have an open discussion with participants while ensuring they covered all the key points. The discussion guides used with young carers and with stakeholders are included in Annex B.

Data Analysis

A systematic thematic approach to analysis was used in order to produce findings that are clearly grounded in participants' accounts and are transparent and methodologically robust. This involved the following stages:

• Initial interviewer observations – immediately after each interview, researchers completed a proforma outlining their initial impressions of key points emerging from the interview with respect to the core research questions.
• Early analysis meeting – the research team held an early analysis meeting during fieldwork to identify early themes and discuss any challenges encountered.
• Post-fieldwork analysis meeting – this meeting allowed the research team to discuss the findings from all the interviews and outline key themes and issues in more detail.
• Systematic summarising of key themes – each interview was summarised (using notes and transcripts) into an agreed thematic 'framework matrix'.
• Further systematic analysis of key themes - summarising and organising the data in the way described above enables it to be systematically interrogated to identify the full range of views and compare experiences of young carers in different circumstances.

Recruitment

The recruitment approach for young carers was an opt-in approach, whereby young carers were sent an invitation with details about the research via gatekeeper organisations. The invitation included email and telephone contact details for a named member of the research team to allow young carers to get in touch on their own terms.

Young carers were offered a £30 'thank you' payment as an incentive to take part.

Young carers who got in touch were then asked to take part in a short 5 minute screener call with a researcher to check that they were eligible to take part. This also gave young carers a chance to ask any questions they had and researchers made sure that young carers were aware of the aims of the research, what taking part involved and how their data would be securely handled to ensure they could give informed consent.

Early on in the fieldwork period, the invitation was also sent to Social Security Scotland's Young Carers Panel, which is made up of young carers who signed up as part of the Social Security Experience Panels research to help shape policy^[8].

Therefore, recruitment relied heavily on assistance from gatekeepers. A variety of gatekeepers were approached in an attempt to reach carers in certain minority groups, such as minority ethnic and LGBT young carers. Gatekeeper organisations that helped contact young carers included:

• Carers Trust
• The Scottish Young Carer Services Alliance (SYCSA)
• Young Scot
• Minority and Ethnic Carers of Older People Project (MECOPP)
• LGBT Youth Scotland

Sample

22 interviews were conducted with young carers. Of those:

• 20 were recipients of Young Carer Grant while two were non-recipients^[9].
• 19 cared for a parent or sibling while one cared for a grandparent. The remaining two cared for both parents or a parent and a sibling.
• 12 were in school, five were in higher education/further education, three were in work, and two were neither in education or work.

Table 1 shows a breakdown of other characteristics of the young carer sample.

Table 1: Demographic charactersitics of 22 young carers interviews

Gender	Number of interviews
Male	7
Female	14
Non-binary	1
Age	Number of interviews
16 years old	5
17 years old	6
18 years old	10
19 years old[10]	1
Ethnicity	Number of interviews
White	18
Minority Ethnic	4
LGBT	Number of interviews
LGBT	21
Non-LGBT	1

Interviews were conducted with carers across a number of local authorities including West Lothian; Glasgow; North Lanarkshire; Fife; West Dunbartonshire; Falkirk; Edinburgh city; Dundee; Perth and Kinross; and Angus.

Of the 20 carers who received the grant, nine received it after COVID-19 restrictions came into place in March 2020 and 11 received it after the COVID-19 restrictions came into place after March 2020.

Six stakeholder interviews were conducted with:

• Carers Trust
• Representatives from seven different young carers' groups from the SYCSA (this included two group discussions with 3 workers at each)
• Minority and Ethnic Carers of Older People Project (MECOPP)
• Young Scot

Limitations

The purpose of qualitative research is not to assess the prevalence of particular views or experiences, but to reveal the depth and diversity of lived experience. Therefore, it is important to bear in mind that the findings from this research do not represent the views of all young carers in Scotland or indicate the wider prevalence of any particular viewpoint. Where prevalence of a particular view is described in this report, using terms such as "some" or "a few", this relates only to the sample of research participants and not the wider population.

Due to the nature of this research and the timing of the fieldwork period, there were some difficulties during recruitment of young carers:

• Despite gatekeeper organisations sending general reminder emails to young carers they were in touch with, the opt-in approach to recruitment (while the most appropriate and ethical approach) reduced the response rate, as young carers were required to actively get in touch with researchers to take part.
• Young carers were likely to be facing extra stress and pressures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, for example having to shield alongside their cared-for person. This may have meant fewer young carers were willing to take the time to take part in this research. Furthermore, gatekeepers highlighted that young carers who struggled with applying for Young Carer Grant were typically those in more vulnerable situations or chaotic households, and did not feel it was appropriate to appoach them about the research at this time.
• Although the invitations to take part in the research stressed that young carers did not need to have previously received Young Carer Grant to take part, non-recipients may have been less likely to think that the research was aimed at them and less likely to read the full invitation.

This meant that fewer young carers (22) took part compared to the initial target of 30. Additionally, only two eligible young carers who had not managed to complete a successful Young Carer Grant application took part and we were not able to reach any young carers who missed out on the grant due to the 'one carer rule' (although one young carer received the grant instead of her brother who also cared).

The implications of this are that, while the experiences of recipients of the grant are well represented within the sample of young carers, the experiences of those who had difficulties applying for the grant or those who were unable to apply due to the 'one carer rule' are represented largely by stakeholders and not first-hand. This is also the case for under-represented groups, for example there were no young carers in the sample from rural areas but the experiences of being a carer in this situation was discussed by young carers' groups based in rural areas.

It is also important to acknowledge that the evidence on the impact of Young Carer Grant is based on young carers' perceptions of the impact rather than on measurable data (such as validated wellbeing scales) collected before and after the implementation of Young Carer Grant.