Young Carers in Schools. Step 7: Raising Awareness of School Staff about Young Carers

This step, taken from Supporting Young Carers in Schools: A Step-by-step Guide for Leaders, Teachers and Non-teaching Staff, supports schools to raise the awareness of their staff about this vulnerable pupil group.

To meet the needs of young carers in your school, it is vital that all school staff understand why young carers need support to enjoy and achieve at school, and the simple things they can do to raise the attendance, attainment and wellbeing of these pupils as part of their wider roles within the school.

Key points

• Building staff understanding about young carer issues does not mean creating additional functionality within staff’s existing roles. Rather, by being aware of how to identify and support young carers, staff will be better equipped to fulfil their existing roles within the school, and schools will identify and support young carers more effectively.
• Identifying a young carer early can stop them taking on caring roles which are excessive or inappropriate. No child or young person’s education, wellbeing and potential should be affected by their caring role.

Download Step 7: Raising Awareness of School Staff about Young Carers to find out more about:

Why it is important to raise the awareness of all staff members

The different ways in which awareness can be raised, including top tips for developing and maintaining effective young carer noticeboard material.  As schools will be in different stages of their journey to implementing support for young carers, the ways to raise awareness are categorised into the basics, beyond the basics and best practice.

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 

Tools available to support Young Carers School Operational Leads to raise school staff awareness include: 

• Step 7, Tool 1:Checklist of signs a pupil is a young carer
• Step 7, Tool 2:Exemplar staff noticeboard material
• Step 7, Tool 3: How can school staff support young carers
• Step 7, Tool 4: Staff training facilitator guide
• Step 7, Tool 5: PowerPoint for use in staff training
• Step 7, Tool 6: Hand outs for use in staff training
• Step 7, Tool 7:Staff training evaluation form

The Young Carers School Operational Lead may also with to download and use Step 5, Tool 1: Recommended points to include in a whole school commitment to create a whole school commitment to young carers to display on staff noticeboards and the intranet.

What to do next

Once you have raised the awareness of school staff, go to Step 8: Raising awareness of pupils and families about young carers.