Carers Federation is proud to announce a new project from Action for Young Carers: AYC: Flourish.
AYC: Flourish builds upon the fantastic work undertaken by Action For Young Carers over the COVID-19 pandemic, providing online cooking tutorials and lessons via zoom alongside local nutritionist and food safety expert, Rupert Aikman.
Over the coming months, AYC: Flourish will provide young carers and their families with more online cooking courses as part of a wider health and wellbeing package which will include exercise sessions, arts and crafts, mindfulness activities and life skills workshops.
The sessions kick off on June 1st with a Zoom cooking workshop for young people of primary school age, and Thursday June 3rd for those of secondary school age. Moving forward, as the lockdown roadmap allows and with careful consideration of the safety of everyone involved, other workshops will be a mix of in-person and online.
“Carers Federation is delighted to receive the funding from the Masonic Charitable Foundation that allows us to continue with and expand our online cookery courses for young carers. These classes have proven to be very popular during lockdown and we’ll be using the funds to bring in additional online activities for these young people and their families,” said CEO Rob Gardiner.
The cooking sessions have been a huge success so far, with 50 young carers and families taking part over the course of the pandemic. The AYC team has adapted to very difficult circumstances and provided an invaluable sense of community and learning for young carers and their families, who otherwise were facing severe isolation as a result of the lockdown rules.
One young carer had a fantastic journey through the cooking classes:
“Thank you, thank you for running the cooking course. My young person has struggled terribly with anxiety over the past year, which accumulated in a long period out of school. She used to come to all your sessions pre Covid but she hadn’t accessed anything in over a year. Until now,” a parent told us.
I signed her up for the cooking course under her strict instructions that she wasn’t going to be on video and the mic was stayed off! The first session, she really struggled to even stay in the kitchen, never let alone engage in cutting or chopping. In fact she was so overwhelmed, she couldn’t be part of the second session! However over the coming weeks, she has got involved slowly which has accumulated in a fab last session this afternoon!
I wish I could have shown you the smile on her face when she took a bite of her burger that SHE made with very little help from me!! It put such a spring in her step! Thank you so much for all the wonderful work that you do with our young carers who often get overlooked due to the caring of others!”