Madam,

Further to your report on Thursday, 15 November, may I join in the effort to raise awareness of the risk of exploitation? The agencies within the Mid Wales Safeguarding Board are rightly drawing attention to modern slavery, financial scams, cyber bullying and sexual exploitation.

They will not mention a damaging and far more widespread exploitation.

If you have a child between five and 17 years old then there is another threat. If mum, dad, or a sibling become ill or suffers an accident leaving them unable to fully care for themselves, the child may become a ‘young carer’. It may not happen to your family, but there are around 3,400 of these young carers across Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire. They are unpaid (if they were paid under the age of 12 their caring would be illegal and 13 to 15-year-olds could work for pay, but only for limited hours within certain periods each day).

This is exploitation sanitized by ‘support’. Support that is given to help them cope; to help them cope so that they remain available to go on caring, working unpaid for the state. These young carers are known to have increased risks of mental health problems; on average they are absent from school or attend for reduced hours on 48 days a year.

Their ability to go out for exercise or meet with friends is restricted. Their education, well-being and health all suffer (it is illegal to employ 13 to 15-year-olds part time in work that will damage their health, well-being, or education).

This exploitation by government, social services and NHS, of the love of a child for a parent or sibling, with no right to opt out, when the child is too young to begin to comprehend the adverse impacts on their own lives, I can only describe as an obscenity which we should not tolerate in the 21st century.

Will the Mid Wales Safeguarding Board start safeguarding?

Yours etc,

Bill Parker, Llanfair Clydogau, Lampeter.

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