We are proud to offer these tools and services as part of our MYTIME charity IT support.

Teams Collaboration

Microsoft 365 Business Systems

Endpoint and Defender Security

Sharepoint Strategy and Implementation

Company Overview

MYTIME Young Carers was set up over 10 years ago to help those between the ages of 5-25 who are the primary or significant caregiver to someone in their family.

A young carer is a child or young person under the age of 18 who helps look after someone in their family, or a friend, who is ill, disabled, living with a mental health condition or who misuses substances.

The primary objective of the charity is to provide support to these young carers, whilst educating schools, youth groups, clubs, and local authorities on how to recognise them and provide the help they require.

MYTIME has a goal to raise awareness, nationally, as to the gap in recognition and funding for these carers, who usually fall between any funding tests or criteria and rely on charity support for help.

Client: MYTIME Young Carers
Industry: Charity
Services: IT Support and Consultancy, Microsoft 365, Data Security

The Challenge for MYTIME

Identifying a young carer is very difficult for a number of reasons. They are private people and often fear that, if it’s known that they are an “unofficial” carer, they might get the family member they care for, or themselves, into trouble.

The identification is made harder still as schools and teachers are not trained to spot someone who may be a young carer, therefore no provision is made for them.

Young carers are less likely to achieve the same grades and qualifications as their peers due to the time spent away from school looking after a family member. When they are able to attend, they can be subject to detentions, as well as losing out on extracurricular activities (such as sports teams etc.), due to poor attendance. This can deprive them of some of their only “releases” from the pressures of caring.

MYTIME Programmes

MYTIME run a number of programmes to provide support, both to young carers, and to schools and local authorities:

Level Up Programme

This is a programme that finds and trains advocates in schools (teachers, careers advisors etc.) in what to look for when encountering a young carer, and how to help them to stay on their learning path. It also identifies the young carers themselves and begins the programme of support to give the pupils a better chance in school.

The programme is collecting data about the number of carers in schools under the age of 18, and the levels of understanding in schools as to what a young carer is and how to spot them. This data will be presented nationally once the dataset is large enough to be meaningful.

Employability Programme

This programme works with schools that have identified a young career to provide additional support through the school years, into further education and on to employment, taking the young carer up until they are 25.

Making Memories Programme

Most carers don’t enjoy days out and free time as their role prevents this. They also don’t talk to their peers about the caring role, so appear closed off or shut down. The Making Memories Programme does two things:

  1. It allows them to have days out at adventure centres and retreats where they can be children.
  2. It introduces them to other young carers who are also going through the same thing, allowing them to share their experiences with those who understand.

Where did Vissensa get involved?

Lockdown was a critical time for young carers as schools were shut and lessons were being conducted over the internet. For young carers who were not regularly at school, the provision of a laptop was not the responsibility of the school, so many were left without the ability to study.

MYTIME’s CEO sent a plea out on social media for any usable laptops that people were willing to donate so they could be passed on to these carers. Vissensa rallied to the cause and, due to our supplier relationships, were able to purchase 20 refurbished laptops and donate them to the charity.

This started a relationship between the charity and Vissensa in which we became a supporter of the MYTIME cause and, during discussions, found a number of pressing IT issues that we had the expertise to help MYTIME with.

Our Solutions – Taking our charity IT support further

Through our work in the sector, we have found that modernising the use of IT in charities is something that still has a long way to go. Despite this, it is critical in the successful operation of a charity as it links the funding and grant management, as well as the volunteer and core deliverables. In MYTIME’s case, these are the advancement of young carers opportunities and wellbeing, as well as the collating and analysing of data from the programmes. This programme data is the is key in moving the mindsets of support organisations and the government as to how these young carers should be recognised and funded.

MYTIME has rolled out a digital transformation project that encompasses security, service delivery, data collection, business analytics and reporting. This means the charity is free to expand its services and reach more young carers, knowing that the systems in place can support the vision. At Vissensa we have also linked the website and CRM systems to develop a more frictionless experience for supporters and advocates of the charity’s activities.

One issue we found within MYTIME was that they had no central repository for files and documents. They had files across multiple machines and places in the business and this scattered information opened the door for potential problems.

Firstly, there was the issue of security – important and sensitive data was being saved onto individual devices where it was vulnerable to being seen, stolen, or deleted. With this came the second issue – that documents could be lost. Saving files to one machine risks losing it through power failures, damage to the machine itself, insufficient storage, amongst other things so is best avoided. The final problem was that it limited collaboration across the business. Documents on one machine are hard to share and doing so can put the data at risk too.

At Vissensa, we noticed this and so decided to implement SharePoint across MYTIME. We spoke to those involved in the business to get an overview of the structure and design required from SharePoint to fulfil the needs of the charity. This way we were able to migrate documents to where they needed to be. In doing this, we were also able to set access layers with us as the administrator, increasing the security of their operations. With Vissensa running this as a managed service, it has allowed us to set up a process that will keep operations in SharePoint clean and controlled.

Ultimately, SharePoint created an epicentre to MYTIME’s operations, allowing them to work smarter, safer, and overall streamlining their business processes.

Testimonial

“MYTIME had been looking for an IT partner that could support us across a diverse range of issues. We were after helpdesk support, infrastructure organisation, assistance with data security, and general IT solutions.

They have helped address these concerns, whilst finding and developing solutions for issues we hadn’t even considered.

The guidance they have offered has been invaluable, and recommended improvements, such as the implementation of SharePoint, have changed the way we operate for the better.

Vissensa has played a key role in improving our data security and our wider use of IT day-to-day. We couldn’t be happier.”

Krista Sharp – CEO | MYTIME Young Carers