Why everyone should know the language around young carers

My name is Rab, and I write books where young carers meet aliens.

If you’re not one hundred per cent sure what “young carer” means, then you’re not alone. It’s something even a lot of teachers struggle with. In fact, young carer awareness is a major challenge in schools across the UK.

Because I’ve spent time touring schools and carers' charities across the country, reading from my books and talking about young carers, I have a unique national perspective on this issue—as well as, hopefully, an insight into how to fix it.

Before we get into that, let’s start with a definition. The NHS states that you are a young carer “if you're under 18 and help to look after a relative with a disability, illness, mental health condition, or drug or alcohol problem.” It’s important to note young adult carers too, aged between 16–25.

There are an estimated 1 million young carers in the UK, with research suggesting that one in five children carry out some kind of caring task for sick or disabled family members.

So why, then, have so many carers’ charities I’ve worked with told me the same story? Of reaching out to a school around offering support for young carers, and hearing back, “Oh, we don’t have any young carers here.” With the figures above, the statistical unlikeliness of this is staggering. Of course, the next part of the story is often: and then after we worked with the school, they realised several pupils were young carers.

Don’t misunderstand me, this isn’t a universal school response. Some schools are aware of young carers in their population and are keen for any resources they can access to help support them, other schools are already in a position to offer a lot of support. I’ve also had plenty of teachers tell me that prior to working with local carers' charities, they’d had little to no training around young carers, but they feel they understand more now.

It’s precisely this lack of consistency that is the issue. Thankfully, we live in a world nowadays where it’s rarer (though it does still happen!) that a staff member at a school says, “We don’t have any pupils with mental health issues here,” or, “We don’t have any gay pupils here.” So why does it still happen around young carers?

The challenges and prejudices faced by LBGTQ+ pupils and pupils with mental health issues have definitely not been resolved. But over the last 20 or so years, there has been an increase of awareness around these demographics. School staff and other adults around young people are much more likely to know and understand relevant terms, whether that be phrases such as bisexual, asexual and transgender, or depression, anxiety and wellbeing. Pupils themselves are also much more likely to know this language, and thus be able to describe themselves.

One significant issue in support for young carers is hidden carers, who may not know the term young carer or realise that it applies to them—for these young people, understanding the language can be key to then accessing support.

So how can we imitate the model of mental health awareness or LQBTQ+ awareness, to help young carer awareness? My argument would be through a focus on language. Projects that focus on establishing key “young carer workers” in schools are wonderful, and help ensure there’s someone focusing on young carers in the school—but alongside this, we also need all school staff to truly understand the term young carer. 

If school staff fully understand the term young carer, it means they know there are valid reasons why a pupil might be late to school, or tired and struggling in lessons, and approach unclear situations with this in mind. Fully understanding caring responsibilities means an awareness of how hugely varied the tasks young carers undertake are, incorporating everything from emotional support to household tasks to physical care. Fully understanding cared for includes taking into account the experience of the family members that a young carer supports, and the challenges and barriers facing them as well.

This sort of cultural change comes from the top. Head teachers, senior leaders and governors cannot wave a magic wand and give staff more time to support young people—as much as this is needed! But they can influence the culture within their schools, and the language that is used and understood across the staff team. They can start conversations around young carers in their schools, raising awareness and supporting staff to feel confident and informed to speak about caring responsibilities, and develop a culture where pupils will feel confident and able to speak about caring too.