Why support young
carers in schools?
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Young carers often feel different or isolated from their peers and have limited opportunities to socialise.
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Around 1 in 20 young carers miss school because of their caring responsibilities.
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42% of young carers have said that nobody in their school was aware of their caring role
(Sempik, J, Becker, S, 2013).
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Studies have shown that young carers are significantly more likely to be bullied than others.
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Young carers can experience mental health difficulties such as stress, anxiety and depression.
5 ways we can boost the support you offer
1.
We can deliver school assemblies to raise awareness of young carers and the challenges they face
2.
We can deliver workshops to ensure staff are able to identify and support young carers in their roles
3.
We can provide you with resources to assess and support the needs of young carers and their families
4.
We can work with you to support young carers you have identified
5.
We can host on-site peer support groups and drop in sessions for young carers through our schools project
resources for schools
We have produced some resources for schools, so that staff can more easily identify and support Young Carers.
For staff, we have produced a short guide with information and links to further resources. There is also a poster for the Staff Room, highlighting which team member is responsible for the school's Young Carers.
For students, we have three posters for different age groups (infant, junior, secondary) encouraging Young Carers, of all ages, to ask for help.
Are you a teacher,
parent or student?
We’d love for your school to fundraise for our Lambeth Young Carers Service. It will help us provide:
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Young carers with breaks from caring responsibilities
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A range of after school and holiday activities
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Training for local schools and other agencies, to help them identify young carers and support their needs
What local schools are saying about us:
La Retraite Catholic School for Girls
The experience is always entirely rewarding – the Carers' Hub staff are exceptionally professional, caring and hard working. They fully appreciate the quirks and delays that can take place in our school and they adapt accordingly. Their advice and liaison has been vital in supporting us to support appropriately some of our most vulnerable children and their families. The staff have formed excellent relationships with our Young Carers – the activities that they have offered outside of school have been most rewarding and have offered a welcome respite from their caring roles.
What local schools are saying about us:
Sudbourne Primary School
It has been excellent. Our link contact Alice Dias has been invaluable in raising our
awareness of the needs of young carers at Sudbourne. It has been a pleasure working with her, and seeing her working with our young carers in such a sensitive and caring manner.
(...) We have amended our new starters information forms to include information on young carers, so in the future, we expect to see faster identification of young carers (should parents/carers choose to disclose).
What local schools are saying about us:
Lilian Baylis Technology School
I have had the good fortune of working with Lambeth Young Carers (Carers Hub) for over 3 years now, in particular Alice Dias who has supported the school in a variety of different ways including 1:1 support for our young carers, regular assemblies and providing places for school holiday activities.
Alice and her team have always put the child's interest first which has often meant working above and beyond the norm. An example of this can be found when Alice attended a home visit on her scheduled day off due to the risks involved with a case. Lambeth Young Carers provides support to those individuals that often get overlooked or fall through the cracks. I cannot praise their work enough and long may it continue.