Young Carers in Schools Award

In October 2022, Miss Richmond, Higher Level FSA and Assistant DSL began to explore how schools can help and support young carers with the aim of achieving a recognised accreditation for Garth Hill College. She did this by completing her own research and collaborating with other schools.

By definition, a young carer is someone under the age of 18 who looks after a family member or friend who has a physical or mental health condition, or misuses drugs or alcohol. They may also look after brothers, sisters or elderly relatives too.

In her own words, this is how Miss Richmond successfully co-ordinated and achieved the Young Carers in Schools Bronze Award for the College, with the support and help of Mrs Cordoba-Tellez to ensure there was full staff buy-in.

‘The first thing I wanted to do was ensure that our staff body and students knew what a young carer was so I had posters created which were directed at both the staff body and students listing the criteria of a young carer and placed around the school.

I had the senior team speak about young carers at assemblies and I was also able to identify some potential young carers already by linking siblings of students I was already working with.

I then created a young carer drop-in to create a safe place for young carers to talk and advertised this around the school. I understood this might not be for everyone so I created a young carer check-in where I would speak to young carers on a one to one basis about any of their difficulties.

To improve what was already in place, I aimed to achieve the Bronze Award by following the guidance listed by the young carers’ association, and did the following:

• attended online clinics to further my knowledge and understand what was needed to become a certified bronze awarded school
• ensured we met all of the required criteria
• updated old notice boards with new and up to date information about young carers and provided the staff body with ways that they could support young carers
• created a notice board detailing support available for young carers including external organisations
• presented my work to the Senior Leadership Team so that they could also support. I spoke directly to the young carers themselves to gather their views and capture their voices.

Alongside this, I completed young carers assessments, a framework used to identify the needs of this young person and how they are supporting their families.

Mrs Cordoba-Tellez informed the governors and Mrs Powell also supported me with communications explaining what young carers were and how we could support.’

After completing the five standards on the checklist at the beginning of July, Miss Richmond photographed all of her evidence and submitted it.  Miss Richmond was overjoyed that her hard work had been recognised and the College was awarded the Young Carers in Schools Bronze Award.

Upon receiving the award, Miss Richmond added,

‘I believe that my focus for the last academic year was to introduce, build and implement this framework of support for Young Carers at Garth Hill College. My focus this year is to continue to support Young Carers with their own mental health and worries, and to also add to the support, improving what is already in place.’

Upon hearing the news, Principal, Mr Grainger added,

‘We are delighted to receive this award.  Schools can do so much to help young carers and ensure that good support is available to them.  We take this seriously at Garth Hill and we are committed to making a positive difference to the young carers that we support.’

Andy Lebrecht, Chair of Governors, commented,

‘This is valuable recognition of an important aspect of the school’s work.  Well done to all concerned.’ 

Lastly Miss Richmond had this to say,

‘I could not have achieved this without all staff being on board. Thank you to all our staff for their support in identifying potential young carers and supporting them the best they can.’