Young Carers in Schools. Step 5: Acknowledging Young Carers in Principal School Documents

This step, taken from Supporting Young Carers in Schools: A Step-by-step Guide for Leaders, Teachers and Non-teaching Staff, supports schools incorporate the needs of young carers in their principal school documents.

It is vital that schools acknowledge young carers in their principal school documents and proactively communicate these to pupils, families and staff. 

Doing so will support the creation of a whole school ethos where young carers and their families are respected and valued. It will also provide clarity about the roles and responsibilities of school staff in relation to young carers, and the type of support available to pupils and their families.

Key points

To achieve these benefits, schools will need to take a number of key actions:

• Develop a whole school commitment for young carers.
• Develop a school policy for young carers.
• Revise existing policy and documents to reflect young carers’ needs.

What guidance is available for schools?

Step 5: Acknowledging Young Carers in Principal School Documents sets out the key ways schools can incorporate young carers’ needs into their principal school documents.

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.

Tools 

The following tools aims to make incorporating young carers' needs in principal school documents as easy as possible: 

• Step 5, Tool 1: Recommended points to include in a whole school commitment
• Step 5, Tool 2: Young carers school policy checklist
• Step 5, Tool 3: Checklist of other principal documents which should reference young carers

What to do next

Once you have acknowledged young carers in your principal school documents go to Step 6: Setting up Systems to Identify, Assess, and Support Young Carers.