WIREDGOV

For young carers, education and social life are often shaped by responsibilities that sit outside the classroom and beyond the school day. Caring does not pause for homework, deadlines, or friendships.

In that context, digital access is not an added convenience. It influences whether participation is possible, whether connection can be sustained, and whether young people are able to keep pace with peers whose circumstances look very different.

Tech4YoungCarers was created to meet young carers within that reality. After a full year of delivery, the programme has reached a point where its impact can be examined with greater clarity. The first-year evaluation looks closely at how digital access is affecting education and social outcomes for young carers aged 11 to 25, offering a more precise picture of where participation has improved, where social connection has strengthened, and where progress remains uneven.

The findings resist simple conclusions. Instead, they surface patterns that are useful precisely because they are specific and grounded in lived experience. For Elizabeth Anderson, CEO, Digital Poverty Alliance, the value of the first-year findings lies in their precision: “They allow the conversation to move beyond assumption and speak more clearly about where digital access is genuinely supporting young carers, and where attention now needs to shift if outcomes are to improve in a sustained way.”

Those findings will be shared at an in-person event in Cambridge on 19 February, bringing together stakeholders working across education, policy, research, funding, and frontline delivery. The focus of the afternoon is interpretation rather than presentation. Time to sit with the evidence, examine what it is showing in practice, and consider how learning from the first year should shape decisions made next.

The event also marks the first in a series taking place during the Digital Poverty Alliance’s 25th anniversary year. The emphasis is firmly forward-looking. Evidence first. Outcomes in view. And a conversation grounded in what the first year of Tech4YoungCarers is already revealing.

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