“Young carers, in general, are being forgotten” – Covid-19’s Impact on Salford’s young carers, with ‘Lonely Not Alone’

Credit: Lonely Not Alone

Across Salford, young careers have been impacted by local and national lockdowns more than most.

This is the case for 16-year-old Elorm Fiavor, who cares for her mother who suffers from sickle cell, a disease that affects the body’s red blood cells.

Elorm studies at a local college, in-between caring for her mother. She believes that schools staying open during the second lockdown is a positive thing.

She said: “So far the second lockdown has been okay, as I’m not as restricted as the first one.

“At least I can go to college and be a normal teenager without responsibilities.”

Elorm believes that government support for young careers during the pandemic has been substantial but more needs to be done to raise awareness for young carers, saying: “The government has been helpful, we got given food packages weekly and that helped as none of us had to go out to the shop.

“Young carers in general I think are being forgotten, we barely have a voice in the media hence there is zero to no help or awareness around young carers.”

Elorm is involved with, Lonely Not Alone, a campaign aimed at showing young people that they’re not alone.

She said: “I first got involved with Lonely Not Alone after applying in high school.

“After I got picked we worked on the general ideal of the campaign.

“We decided on the characters of Lonely Not Alone, that represent the various left out not talked about groups: from young carers being the firefly to a character representing disabled people.”

Recently, Lonely Not Alone launched its Yellow Socks campaign, urging people post pictures of them wearing yellow socks on social media, as a show of support for both the campaign and those suffering with loneliness.

Elorm said: “We picked yellow socks as our symbol as a way to show solidarity.

“Socks, in general, are hidden from the human eye when someone is wearing them, unless they deliberately show you or you search for it, in the same way loneliness is not always seen unless you are told about it.

“We want people to wear yellow socks to show their support around youth lonliness.”

Lonely Not Alone, urges people to post their pictures on social media and use #ootdyellowsocks to show their support.

You can find more information about Lonely Not Alone here.