A qualitative study investigating the experiences of young adults caring for a sibling with disability within immigrant families in the UK: “Challenges are just the constant”

ABSTRACT

Background

Despite a growing body of literature investigating the impact of disabilities on family relationships, the experiences of ethnic minorities remain underexplored.

Method

Semi-structured online interviews were conducted with eight young people (aged 18-28 years) with disabled sibling(s) within an immigrant family to understand how this affects their wellbeing and relationships, identify sources of support and strain, and explore the significance of balancing different cultural expectations. We used reflexive thematic analysis to analyse the transcribed data.

Results

Analysis identified three themes: constant challenges, negative consequences on self and relationships, and coping strategies to overcome difficulties. Despite maintaining positive relationships with their siblings, challenges took a serious toll on young people’s psychological wellbeing and relationships. Participants used various coping strategies but desired culturally appropriate extra-familial support.

Conclusions

This study has highlighted the urgent requirement for policy makers to investigate how to better support young carers from diverse backgrounds.

KEYWORDS:

• Disability
• sibling relationships
• wellbeing
• cross-cultural values
• qualitative

Acknowledgements

The current study was not supported by any external funding. All authors contributed to the conceptualisation and design of the study, data analysis and to the writing of the manuscript. Data collection was conducted by the first author. We would like to thank the young adults for their participation in the study, and those who raised awareness of our research project with others. The first author would like to dedicate this work to their older brother whose marked resilience inspired them to pursue this research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data are not available.