Local authorities must continue to support young carers

• Written by: Hope Laing — Young carer and Member of the Scottish Youth Parliament
• Published: 8th April 2020

Hope shares her experience as a young carer and her views on what needs to change to better support carers in education.

Being a young carer can be compared to many things, however, I am yet to see an accurate comparison that represents me.

Because of this, I was delighted to be contacted by the Carer Voices project to share my story. Sharing stories could help other young carers like myself, whether that be in a way they can relate or just simply to know that other people are going through similar situations. For those that do not have caring responsibilities, it is a chance to get an insight into what it is like to be a young carer. Every young carers story is unique, but many young carers face the same inequalities throughout school which allows us to share feelings.

In order to fully tell my story, I must begin with a short background. I live in Orkney, a small group of islands of the north coast of Scotland. I am an only child born to a single mother, one of my favourite things to do is to walk on the beach with my dog. On Orkney we have many beaches, sandy ones, rocky ones, long stretched ones and for some, in the back-garden ones. You can expect to see wildlife such as seals basking on the rocks and birds singing in the sky. On one of these familiar journeys to the beach, something happened which will forever be ingrained into my memory. This event in turn led to me becoming a young carer overnight. In order to protect the privacy of the person I have caring responsibilities for, I will not go into further details. This sudden unexpected event truly changed my life – I had to learn to adapt and to juggle my new responsibilities with my usual ones. Some examples of the things I had to learn to do were to manage medications and times, remember key information from appointments and the standard cooking and cleaning duties.

I remember trying to explain my situation to one of my friends, in particular explaining my new responsibilities and the response I got was “so just extra chores then? It’s no big deal, I do them too.” To be truthful, this hurt me. I felt like I was able to open up to this person and instead in return I got this response. Everyone has their own problems in life but it is never okay to disregard someone else’s for whatever reason. I, and likely many others, face this problem every day. Personally, I don’t mind hearing about other people’s issues and woes, but it is unfair when the conversation is very one sided and isn’t chaired well.

This is where I feel more support should be provided, within education to ensure young carers are able to reach their full potential in school whilst still being able to fulfill their caring responsibilities. Students should be supported with a level of teacher understanding, extra flexibility regarding completion of homework whilst still providing reasonable deadlines and resources in place to maintain a positive mindset towards education. All these can be sourced through guidance teachers. I am currently unaware of the training teachers get around young carer awareness, but I would suggest a specific resource pack that would preferably be made by young carers for all teaching staff.

Finally, regarding current affairs, the elephant in the room lies with COVID-19. The decision regarding closing the schools is within the best interests of infection control and the safety of others. However, local authorities must ensure that young carers are supported in the best way possible.

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