Agenda item

Report by Assistant Director Education and Skills.

The Committee are asked to assess the County Council’s responsibilities for young carers, the impact being a young carer has on young people and how these are being addressed.

48.1     The Cabinet Member for Learning and Skills, Cllr N Jupp, introduced the report highlighting that this service had joined Education and Skills in summer 2022 and it was a good time to hear what was being done and what was planned for the future. 

48.2     The Committee heard from Ms Pope, Deputy CEO of Carers Support.  Carers Support works under a contract with the County Council and has about 30,000 registered adult, friend and family carers, 327 of which are young adults aged 18-24 years.  The last 12 months had seen a 34% increase in the number of carers coming forward. 

48.3     Carers Support work with young carers transitioning into the adult services through the ‘My Futures’ project, working with 16–19-year-olds, introducing them to the adult carer service before they move over to their support.  Carers Support had also been involved in setting up the Young Carers Partnership with local Sussex clubs and the Young Carer Team (YCT) to bring some additional support to young carers, particularly on the respite support, peer support and opportunities to meet other young carers.  The group had met to discuss lots of themes impacting young carers including the cost of living and mental health. 

48.4     Young carer groups had stopped during the pandemic but were now building back up, however many young carers faced challenges in attending groups either because travel was difficult or caring roles had become more complex and more intensive. 

48.5     As a voluntary sector group/charity Carers Support could gain access to grant funding to support some of the residential and peer activities as well as fundraising for work with 11–16-year-olds. A current focus was a campaign aimed at giving young carers back their childhood. Holiday activities for young carers from 7-11-years of age are also run by Carer Support.  A primary care project was underway trying to raise awareness with GPs of the support routes for young carers. 

48.6     Work was also underway with the University of Chichester as many young carers struggled balancing their caring role with progressing into further education, especially if it meant moving away from the family environment. 

48.7     Members of the Committee asked questions and a summary of those questions and answers follows.

48.8     The YCT are working on building up data on disadvantaged, BAME, etc, carers for incorporating into future reports. 

48.9     Due to the 43% increase in referrals, the assessment of a young carer could take about three months to get them allocated to a worker.  Every case is triaged on entry to ensure there were no safeguarding issues and identify if the young carer/family had support from other agencies.  From 1 April 2023 the YCT would have access to additional financial resources to employ key workers to undertake assessments.  Refusal to assess was very rare.  Self-referrals mostly came from older teenagers, particularly as they moved on in education, and it was felt young children were often not aware that what they did at home was anything other than normal.  Members felt partners along the journey, for example pregnancy, early years, pre-school, schools, etc, needed to be trained and supported in identifying and referring young carers.

48.10  The County Council were currently working on a strategy with schools to support of the most vulnerable children including young carers.  It was hoped that schools would be supportive of young carers, for example by having flexible attendance policies to avoid persistent absence and flexibility on sanctions like detentions, among other support, but the County Council could not dictate these to schools.  It was difficult to balance carer needs with the benefit of them being in school receiving an education.  The YCT were using Young Carers Action Day on 15 March 2023 to share resources packs to raise awareness in schools and offer guidance and advice. 

48.11  It was hoped that the new IT system, Bromcom, implemented in schools would help provide data on attendance to highlight trends and patterns.  The 2021 Census had also allowed people to record information on carers, so it was hoped that once that information became available it could be used help identify young carers and families who were not receiving support.  It was estimated that there were 6,000 young carers in the county with the YCT being aware of 2,400.  Currently the largest number of referrals came from schools, but work was in progress to equip other partners, e.g. GPs, health professionals and social care partners, to identify to young carers and their families and refer them to YCT.

48.12  There was no formal process of inspection for this area of work, although the Care Quality Commission were looking at whether it is a next step.  There was no national benchmarking or review of young carers.  Some local authorities dealt with support for young carers in-house and some commission out the services.  The County Council were already working on developing this area of data and would reach out to other authorities to see if data was available and seek out examples of best practice.

48.13  The youngest assessed known young carer in West Sussex was 5-years-old.  Assessment was about establishing if young carers were undertaking inappropriate caring for their age and helping families to put in place appropriate support so that did not need to happen.  Siblings were considered as the family is looked at as a whole unit as part of the assessment.  The Committee highlighted that very young children did not always recognise that they were carers and therefore it was import to be proactive in identifying them.

48.14  The Cabinet Member for Learning and Skills, Cllr N Jupp, thanked the Committee for their comments and questions. He also reported that raising the voice of the child might be shared through the Youth Cabinet.  The Cabinet Member looked forward to providing a further update to the Committee in the future.

48.15  The Chairman welcomed being able to hear about the ongoing work going to support young carers, noted the increase in the numbers of young carers coming forward and welcomed the additional resources being put in place to address this. 

48.16  Resolved – That the Committee:

1.   Highlights the importance of promoting the identification of young carers and asks that the support and guidance provided to schools and other partners focuses on how they can proactively identify young carers, including suggesting schools ask specific questions regarding caring responsibilities at school entry stage.

2.   Asks that the suggestion of a flexible attendance and behaviour policy for young carers is included as part of the support and guidance provided to schools. 

3.   Agrees to write to the Chairman of the Health and Adults Services Scrutiny Committee to highlight the importance of the role of GPs and health professionals in identifying Young Carers and ask to explore if there are any areas to consider for scrutiny.

4.   Suggests that the service explore if there are opportunities for peer review or benchmarking with local authority partners to ensure the service is able to learn from any best practice, and the potential development of a policy for young carers.