 Hai, maeni lauren Donin aq stra ma researcha at the University of Auckland Faculty of Education and Social Work Ma researcha maa yllake ruraka maap ynglouk maik ubi BC BC equality maik pa ynglouk maik ruraka maik ubi i'u i potei i'u ako ta mabaka maik ndiungalgu ruraka maik. BC equality maik ubi i'u potei i'u potei i'u i'u i potei i'u potei i New Zealand I myself am a young carer, and I didn't even realise it until a few years ago. When I was 14, my mum passed away. And because my dad was an international flight attendant, he was away a lot of the time. My eldest brother, Beefy, has autism and an intellectual disability. So when my dad was away, it was my job to care for Beefy. But I never actually knew that there was this thing called young caring. I felt really alone and isolated in my caring role. I never met another young carer, and never thought that anyone else would be doing that kind of role at my age. There are no services for young carers. There's no policy for young carers. There's only four published studies, and there's no groups bringing young carers together. Overall, young carers are a completely hidden group in New Zealand, and I knew that something needed to be done about that. My PhD is so exciting. It's all about gathering young carers together, hearing their voices about their experience of being a young carer and what theirs and their families' needs are. Then I can take the young carers' own voices and bring about change in New Zealand in policy, services, research, and in society. The real difficulty with my study is that young carers themselves don't even know that they're young carers. So how can they come forward to be part of my study, even if they want to? I had to get really creative with my data collection methods. I filmed my experience and I shared it via social media, and it wasn't long until I got young carers coming forward to be part of my study. In the end, 44 young carers came forward to be part of my study. They were diverse in their ethnicity, they were diverse in their genders, ages, from all over New Zealand. In these interviews, we just talked together about our young caring experiences, and young carers told me that these interviews were often the first time they had been able to talk about their young caring experience. As you can imagine, they were really emotional interviews. We often cried together, but we also laughed and were in disbelief together, and there was this sense of finding each other and finally understanding this part of yourself. I'm now writing out my thesis and preparing it for submission next year. I'm Lauren Donnan, I'm a young carer, and I'm going to bring about change for young carers in New Zealand.