Young Carers in Schools. Step 8: Raising Awareness of Pupils and Families 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 pupils and families about young carers.

Key points

To counteract the reasons why many young carers are hidden, schools will need to proactively raise the awareness of pupils and their families about: 

• What it means to be a young carer.
• Disabilities, mental and physical ill-health, and alcohol and substance misuse issues with a focus on dispelling common stereotypes. 

Raising awareness in these areas can help pupils and their families self-identify as a young carer and help remove the stigma associated with certain disabilities, illness and alcohol and substance misuse, thus helping to prevent bullying.

Step 8: Raising Awareness of Pupils and Families about Young Carers provides key information about the ways schools can raise awareness of pupils and families about young carers.

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 include: 

• Step 8, Tool 1: Exemplar noticeboard material for primary schools
• Step 8, Tool 2: Exemplar noticeboard material for secondary schools
• Step 8, Tool 3: Suggested assembly activities
• Step 8, Tool 4: Suggested lesson activities
• Step 8,Tool: 4a Suggested lesson activities continued
• Step 8, Tool 5: Exemplar letter to parents or guardians
• Step 8, Tool 6: Exemplar school newsletter article

The Young Carers’ School Operational Lead may also wish 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.

Next step 

Once you have raised the awareness of pupils and families about young carer issues, go to Step 9: Identifying, assessing and supporting young carers in schools.