Exploring the factors influencing young adult carer students’ engagement with targeted support in Higher Education.

Abstract

Young adult carers (YACs) face significant barriers to both access and retention in higher education. Accurate data on the number of YACs is unavailable, due in part, to students staying ‘hidden’ because of perceived stigma and/or lack of recognition of the label ‘YAC’. This paper focusses on the premise that universities fail to reach many YACs and explores what factors impact engagement or lack thereof with targeted support. It seeks to understand what factors influence students’ interaction with targeted support and whether this aligns with universities’ approach to promoting services and their reliance on students having awareness and self-agency to seek them. Research was conducted at a metropolitan, medium-sized UK university using a mixed-methods, explanatory, sequential design. Interpretative, phenomenological analysis produced four dominant themes: identity, mental health, processes, and student experience and support. The findings indicate that self-identity plays a pivotal role in how the YAC student and the university interact with each other in relation to support. The salient identity is likely to be ‘student’ unless specific support is required, therefore for universities to identify YAC students, processes will need to be adapted to find the student rather than the student being expected to seek out support. To achieve this, a holistic, horizontal support model across the student lifecycle is recommended. Universities should aim to champion YACs to promote acceptance and understanding, use student-friendly language when promoting services to avoid alienation, and offer flexible administrative processes to ensure an improved experience for YACs at university.