Show your support for Young Carers

So many people contacted me last year saying how they had gone through similar experiences to us. When their child had gone to school they had realised that their life was different to that of their peers. They had felt sad and alone coz their peers were too young to understand and empathise what their life as a young carer was like. It led me to start researching how much support there was in schools for young carers, and how much was taught about young carers issues.
Over the past 6 months I have liaised with many carers charities, people working with young carers, aswell as people working high up in local Education, the Children's Commissioner for Wales and Welsh Assembly Govt.

I have discovered that there is a 'hit and miss' situation going on. It is currently left up to individual schools to decide how much is taught about young carers issues with social education (PSE) lessons, which is leading to some schools offering amazing support, whilst others are offering very little support.

The Princess Royal Trust for carers and the Children's Society recently created a fantastic schools resource pack which is a free to download online resource, it offers guidance for teachers on how best to support young carers in their schools, and is a brilliant resource to use to teach pupils about young carers issues. If it was used within schools it would lead to greater empathy and understanding within the school's community.

So far we have managed to get a link to this resource added to the Welsh Assembly Government's PSE website and we hope to get similar links added to the equivalent websites for England, Scotland and N.Ireland.

My next step after that is to contact the Government and Dept for Education.

Our main goal is to get it made compulsary for all schools to support young carers and raise awareness of young carers issues so that young carers will be identified earlier on in their school lives and given the support they need to enable them to achieve their full potential...which is every child's right according to the UN Rights of a child!!

This is where you can help us!!

We have created a petition and we need people to sign it and share it amongst their friends and family. When we have enough signatures we will be sending it to No 10 Downing Street.

It will back up what I am saying ... that the general public feel that there needs to be more support for young carers.

If you think that young carers deserve to be recognised and supported within ALL schools then please follow the link to the petition, sign it and share the link with your friends and family.

http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/youngcarersawareness

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

We really apreciate it!

Victoria Taylor.

P.S. There was a TV programme on last week about young carers, here's the link if you missed it, and would like to watch it.
aahttp://www.itv.com/news/tonight/episodes/tooyoungtocare/

There is a movement starting of charities and young carers support workers who have been working for years to try and get more support for young carers finally being heard and people are beginning to realise just how much young carers do, and how much they save local councils every yr...millions of pounds...so surely they should be supported?! This is why I am reaching out to you and asking for your help... if we could get lots of signatures on this petition it will really help when I contact the Government.

Thank you so much!

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