A Young Carer is someone under the age of 18 who has caring responsibilities for a family member at home.

They may have:

• A serious or long-term illness

• A physical disability

• A mental health problem

• Problems with drugs or alcohol

• A learning disability

• Difficulties in coping with being a parent or carer

Young Carers may carry out tasks and household jobs like:

• Preparing and cooking food

• Helping with personal care and hygiene

• Giving medication

• Communicating on someone’s behalf

• Ensuring someone’s safety

• Providing emotional support

• Paying bills

If you are a Young Carer, doing some of these tasks might make it hard for you to come to school or affect your ability to focus and concentrate to the best of their ability when you are here.

You may:

• Be regularly late for school or have poor attendance

• Often seem tired, withdrawn or preoccupied

• Have difficulty in joining in activities outside of school hours (e.g. after school clubs or residential visits)

• Be a victim of bullying or have difficulties forming friendships

• Be under-achieving academically

• Not hand in homework

• Appear anxious and worried

• Display emotional or behavioural problems

• Have physical problems such as back pain from lifting adults

As a Young Carer, you might also:

• find that you can't go out with your friends

• be confused or angry about the situation at home

• have problems at school because of your reponsibilities at home

• feel alone and unable to talk to anyone about your situation

• need help with the caring

Support:

At The Vine, we want to ensure all Young Carers are offered support. This may vary for different pupils but a core offer is given to all of our Young Carers.

• Group mentoring session faciliated by our Kick Coach Chaplain 
• Counselling sessions (if required) 
• Safe spaces 
• Dedicated time with our Young Carers Champion 
• Priority spaces for all extra curricular clubs

We seek to raise awareness of this issue so that any child acting as Young Carers can be identified and supported. Pupils already identified as Young Carers know that they can speak to any member of staff if they feel they need extra support.

Our Young Carers Champion is Mr Harvey who can be contacted via the school office. 

At The Vine we work closely with and are guided by the work of Centre 33. All of our Young Carers are referred to Centre 33 to see if any additional support may be available to them.