Young Carers in Schools. Step 1: Gaining an Understanding About Young Carers

This step, taken from Supporting Young Carers in Schools: A Step-by-step Guide for Leaders, Teachers and Non-teaching Staff, provides key information about young carers for schools. 

Young carers experience particular challenges that impact on their capacity to achieve and enjoy their time at school. To ensure your school's provision meets the needs of young carers, an essential first step is to develop our knowledge about young carer issues.

Key points

Step 1 Gaining an Understanding About Young Carers provides essential information for schools about:

• Who young carers are.
• The types of activities their caring role might involve.
• The likely number of young carers in each school and why so many are hidden.
• The potential impacts of caring responsibilities on a pupil’s achievement and wellbeing.
•  Why a whole school model of identification and support is essential to meeting young carers’ needs.
• Government’s and Ofsted’s approaches to young carers.
• Young carers’ rights.

This step is taken from Supporting Young Carers in Schools: A Step-by-step Guide for Leaders, Teachers and Non-Teaching Staff. The steps from this guide are designed to be used in order.

What to do next

Once you have built your understanding about young carers, go to Step 2: Reviewing your school's provision for young carers.