Madeleine Buchner: a voice for young carers

Tell me about your journey to founding Little Dreamers.

I grew up as a young carer for both my brother and my mum.

My brother has a range of chronic health conditions and an acquired brain injury and was in and out of hospital since he was six months old. He is two and a half years younger than me, so I didn't really know any different when he started going into hospital.

My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 14. She's now in remission but has been left with a range of chronic health conditions that require ongoing care and support.

For most of my childhood, we were in and out of hospitals and doctors' offices, while providing additional medical and emotional support at home. I'm very lucky – I have the most incredible father. Dad and I shared a lot of the caring load, but my childhood was still very different to that of my friends. I often felt quite isolated and alone, and I had a lot of emotional and mental health challenges that I didn't know how to deal with.

When I was very young, my parents found an organisation that was like Big Brother Big Sister called CareNet, and it provided a mentoring program for siblings of sick kids. When I was nine years old, two of my friends and I started what we called the CareNet Kids Club. We wanted to raise money to help other kids who had a very sick sibling to receive support from CareNet – and it went from there.

After four years, we decided that we didn't want to just fund CareNet, but we wanted to fund other sibling support organisations. We ran a fundraiser for Very Special Kids to launch their siblings camp and for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre to run a sibling support program.