Stephen Betts, CEO of Learn Sheffield, has written an essay for Marc Rowland's new book 'Learning Without Labels: improving outcomes for vulnerable pupils'. It is focussed on the need to better support young carers, which is a Sheffield Priority.
To find out more about the book, visit the John Catt Bookshop or read the introduction from Marc Rowland.
Supporting Young Carers
All too often, when asking a school how they support young carers, the response is, “we don’t have any young carers in our school”. In reality, this may actually mean ‘we don’t know if we have young carers in our school. This is unlikely to be the case and the result is that our education system too often misses the opportunity to support one of our most vulnerable groups of learners.
What is a young carer?
A young carer is defined by Sheffield Young Carers as a child or young person who provides substantial unpaid care for a relative who has disabilities, long term physical illness, mental health difficulties and/or drug or alcohol issues.
Being a young carer means you will be providing the practical and/or emotional care that an adult would normally provide. This may include doing jobs around the house, shopping, helping with personal care (bathing, getting dressed), giving medication, providing emotional support and looking after themselves or their siblings.
The impact of being a young carer can be profound. Any adult with experience of taking on a substantial caring role will, however they view the experience overall, often talk about how tiring, worrying or lonely it can be. Being a young carer can affect a young person in many ways – including social isolation, bullying, difficulties with school attendance and achievement, and physical and mental ill health themselves.
What can a school do?
The principles that underpin supporting young carers well are the same as they are for supporting all vulnerable groups. This is not surprising when they essentially relate to the culture of a great school. Schools that do well by young carers need:
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Fantastic teaching
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Relentless and shared ambition for every pupil
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High expectations for both attainment and readiness
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Systems that identify barriers (and aggregated barriers) and are solution focused
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To develop provision that meets needs (not the other way around)
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Reflective and evidence-based decision making
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To be a school which is characterised by positive relationships
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More fantastic teaching
As a system leader, I recognise that our support for young carers is not as well developed as it is for many other vulnerable groups. We need to be talking about the quality of support for young carers, sharing the approaches and practice that are having the greatest impact. But we also need to focus on overcoming the lack of understanding. We need to improve the identification of young carers. The current situation often reminds me of the stage that we had reached as a profession in relation to pupils with Special Educational Needs when I was a new teacher twenty years ago.
‘We don’t have any young carers’
It is always hard to accurately quantify the size of a group that is often hidden, but research conducted by the BBC in 2010 found that one in twelve pupils provide mid-level to high-level care for someone in their family . In Sheffield this means that Sheffield Young Carers estimate that we have over 7000 young carers in the city. This would be an average of just over 40 per school if they were spread evenly across all sectors.
‘Young carers are in secondary schools’
The majority of young carers are found in secondary schools, but it is a smaller majority than you might think. Barnados say that the average age of a young carer is twelve. Our local data suggests that around 40% of the new referrals last year were aged twelve or under at the point of referral. It is dangerous to extrapolate this data too far, as this may simply reflect a greater awareness or identification of young carers at secondary age, but if only 20% of the estimated number of young carers in Sheffield were in a primary school this would be an average of more than ten per school.
We should also remember that the point of referral doesn’t always reflect the age at which caring began. Whilst sometimes the point of referral coincides with a change of circumstance and is the point when a child begins taking on caring responsibilities, , often young carers are not identified or offered support until the caring role comes to light due to a crisis or significant concern arises. The caring has often been happening for a long time before this, with the impacts of this very entrenched.
Given that young carers are also found across socio-economic groups and have a broad range of contextual factors, it isn’t hard to reach the conclusion that there will be few schools who actually don’t currently have any young carers.
If further food for thought was needed here about the under-identification of this group, a survey in 2010 found that 39% of young carers said that nobody in their school was aware of their caring role (The Princess Royal Trust for Carers).
What approach do schools need to take?
Once a school has recognised that they are likely to have young carers then a whole school approach to identifying and supporting young carers needs to be developed. The Carers Trust (see link below) suggest that all school staff need to have the knowledge and confidence to support young carers because:
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One of the main reasons young carers say they do not access support is stigma. A positive whole school ethos where young carers and their families are respected and valued by pupils, staff and the wider school community is crucial to ensuring young carers and their families feel safe and confident to access support.
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Many young carers are hidden. All school staff need to know how to identify young carers to ensure they do not slip through the net.
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A pupil with caring responsibilities may self-identify to any member of staff whom they feel they can talk to and share their worries and concerns.
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All staff need to be aware of the school’s process for sharing information about a young carer. This will help ensure that information is only shared with the appropriate consent and with a view to guaranteeing that a pupil does not have to repeat their story several times.
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All staff should know not to discuss a pupil’s caring role in front of their peers.
The identification and support of young carers is one of our Sheffield Priorities. We are working with Sheffield Young Carers on a pilot to explore approaches to identifying young carers in a group of primary schools. Initial findings suggest that this is difficult when the children involved do not already have some awareness of the concept of being a carer. It has also highlighted, perhaps predictably, the difficulties associated with introducing anything new into already busy organisations. More positively, we are seeing schools with strong existing provision, systems and culture for vulnerable pupils able to move relatively quickly to broaden this to identify and support young carers.
All of this suggests three initial steps for the school that wants to develop provision for young carers, to create the platform from which great provision can be developed.
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Staff training needs to ensure that all staff have the knowledge to identify and support young carers
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School systems which relate to vulnerable learners need to be widened to include young carers, taking account of the advice above.
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Awareness of the issues relating to young carers needs to be raised across the school community, as a first step towards developing a positive, safe and supportive culture for young carers.
Where can I find out more?
https://professionals.carers.org/ (young carers are one of the categories)
https://professionals.carers.org/step-by-step-guide-gaining-an-understanding-about-young-carers
http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/hidden_from_view_final.pdf
https://www.sheffieldyoungcarers.org.uk/
Stephen Betts,
Learn Sheffield