Did you know…?
Over the last 6 months I have hosted 3 network meetings for our Young Carer leads (these are the people who are responsible for young carer support within schools, lots of high schools in Suffolk have one, does your school?). A network meeting is time for us to get together and chat about what is new information about young carers across the country and what each school might be doing to support young carers and if others can do a similar thing in their school.
The theme for these meetings came from the Carers Trust. Carers Trust is an organisation who support carers of all ages across the country. In 2024 they produced a piece of work which told us about young carers and their attendance in school. The report told us about a lot of different things, from the rate of absence of young carers to the effect that has on the young carer’s ability to learn in school. It also talks about how where you live plays a big part in the support you get for your caring responsibilities.
We thought that this report was really important and wanted to share it with as many high schools and colleges as we could. This is why we created our network meetings, to get everyone together to let them know about the report and also to hear from them about the situation in their school to do with young carers and absence. Across the county we had 26 schools attend the meetings which is great, the majority of these schools wanted the meetings to become a regular thing, so we are hoping to run some more and it will have a different focus this time.
We would love to hear what you think, if you have an idea for a topic we could discuss at the next meeting or would like to share something your school is doing to support you or maybe something you wish your school was doing to help you, then email helen.blight@suffolkfamilycarers.org with your idea.
