School groups workshop a success!

We were pleased with the response that we had from schools for our workshop on Young Carers Action Day 13th March.   It was all about running young carer groups in schools and how this can be done. We had over twenty schools sign up for it!  

Having a young carers group at school can make a real difference and there are many benefits for young carers.  These include that they feel recognised and supported by their school, can share problems with a trusted adult and that they get to know who the other young carers are across the school which means they feel less alone and can access peer support.  

We were very grateful to Jan Peters at St. Gregory and Christine Oates at Rowanfield Primary who presented on their experience of setting up and running thriving young carer groups in both a secondary and primary school.  It was good for teachers to hear directly from other teachers about how it was possible.   We also heard from young carers Samuel (who had not received good support at school) and Sophia (who spoke highly of her in-school young carer group) which helped to add value to the session and give the young carers' perspective.

Our post event evaluation showed that 75% of attendees thought it was extremely useful.   We had ten schools saying they were keen to develop groups following the workshop so we are pleased that it had been inspiring!  Feedback from the workshop included "Loved the eloquence of the young carer voice" and "it was great hearing from the schools that have set up groups."  

Following the workshop we are launching our Young Carers Group Guide to help give even more schools the advice they need to improve in-house support for young carers!

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