A £2,000 donation to a Tees Valley children’s charity is being used to help give young carers something many of them rarely get: a day focused on them.

Miller Homes Teesside has awarded the money to The Junction Foundation through its Community Fund. The funding is supporting the charity’s Young Carers Celebration, which brings young people together for lunch and public recognition of the caring roles they take on at home.

The Junction, based in Redcar and working across the Tees Valley, supports children, young people and families through a number of services. Its young carers work is aimed at children and young adults whose lives are affected by caring for, or sharing responsibility for, a family member.

That can mean helping a parent, sibling, grandparent or another relative because of illness, disability, frailty, mental ill health or addiction. The charity offers whole-family support, one-to-one work, transition support for young adult carers and social activities designed to reduce isolation and build peer networks.

According to material supplied about the donation, representatives from Miller Homes attended the Young Carers Celebration at Pinchinthorpe Hall near Guisborough. The company said the award was made after The Junction applied to its twice-yearly Community Fund.

Rebecca Jones, fundraising and events manager at The Junction Foundation, said support from local businesses was important to the charity’s continuing work and thanked Miller Homes for the donation.

The award is modest beside the large funding announcements that often make headlines, but it is unusually specific about what the money will do. It is not paying for a vague future ambition. It is helping create an event where young people whose time is often shaped by somebody else’s needs can meet other carers and have their contribution recognised.

The Junction says its Young Carers and Next Steps services can also provide individual support, family assessment, help with transitions into adulthood and opportunities for young carers to socialise with others in similar situations.

More information about the service is available directly from The Junction Foundation.

: donation details were published by Business Up North; The Junction’s current young-carer service and organisational information was checked against The Junction Foundation.