Young Carers in Schools. Step 10: Sharing Good Practice with Others

This step, taken from Supporting Young Carers in Schools: A Step-by-step Guide for Leaders, Teachers and Non-teaching Staff, aims to help schools share good practice in identifying and supporting young carers.

Key points

• It is vital that schools that have adopted Steps 1 to 9 of this Step-by-step Guide, share their good practice and lessons learnt with feeder and linked schools including others in their school cluster or multi academy trust.
• By doing so they will ensure positive outcomes are delivered for young carers attending other schools. They will also make it more likely that the caring role of pupils enrolling or transferring to their school is identified by others prior to the pupil’s transition. This will make it easier for schools to implement support and early intervention.
• Identifying a young carer early can stop them taking on caring roles which are excessive or inappropriate. Make sure no child or young person’s education, wellbeing and potential is affected by their caring role, by sharing your good practice today.  
• Sharing good practice with schools is Step 10 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.

Schools should seek opportunities to share effective practice by:

• Disseminating learning with feeder and linked schools, including others in their school cluster or multi-academy trust through transition planning, joint training, mail outs and other information forums
• Participating in the regional networks organised by the Young Carers in Schools programme. The regional networks bring together schools, young carers services and other agencies to share expertise and access training. Opportunities are available online and face-to-face to make sure everyone can get the most out of these networks

Tools

• Step 10, Tool 1: Sharing good practice - A case study example

What to do next? 

The development of effective support for young carers in schools is a reiterative process of continual improvement.  Schools should review their provision at least annually. Reviews should be timetabled at appropriate points within the school calendar so that they:

• Inform the school’s processes for planning and reviewing its use of Pupil Premium funding.
• Ensure that where appropriate young carers are considered as part of the whole school development plan. 

For guidance and tools to support schools to review their provision return to Step 2: Reviewing your school's provision for young carers.