YC Bytes

Moving Through School

• Young Carer team at Carers NSW • Season 1 • Episode 2

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In this episode, the Carers NSW Young Carer team discusses young carer support and identification at school and chats with a young carer about his experience caring for his sisters while completing high school. The episode also features a NSW-based school psychologist, who shares her experiences supporting young carers in a school setting. A transcript for this episode is available here.

To download the NSW Government resource ‘Being a Carer, Being a Student and Being a Kid’, visit the NSW Department of Education website.

To request a free 'Young Carer Awareness Training' session at your school or service, please email yc@carersnsw.org.au or phone 02 9280 4744. 

For support as a young carer, check out Carer Gateway or call 1800 422 737 to find out what’s available in your local area. Carer Gateway is a national model of carer support, and available to any carer across Australia.

The Carers NSW Young Carer Program can also assist young carers living in NSW find the right support for them. Contact the Young Carer team by calling 02 9280 4744 during business hours, or email yc@carersnsw.org.au. 

Subscribe to the Carers NSW Young Carer Program monthly YC eNews to stay up to date with opportunities and updates from the team, and follow the Carers NSW Young Carer Program on Facebook.

For more information about Carers NSW, please visit the Carers NSW website.


We asked our guest speakers for some helpful supports and services and they suggested:

Natalie:

Hi, and welcome back to YC Bytes-

Sarah:

YC Bytes.

Natalie:

… a podcast series by Carers New South Wales, where we shine the light on young carers.

Sarah:

Young carers are children and young people, 25 years and under, who help care for someone living with a disability, mental illness, drug or alcohol dependency, chronic condition, terminal illness, or who is frail.

Natalie:

Carers NSW would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians, countries, and language groups of New South Wales on which we all live, learn, and work. We are recording this podcast on the lands of the Gorualgal people of the Eora nation. We acknowledge the wisdom of elders past and present and pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities of today.

In this podcast series, we'll be speaking with different guests on why it's important for us to acknowledge and celebrate this group of young people, explore some of the barriers of getting through school and work while helping look after someone, and starting the conversation about accessing supports and services.

Hey, everyone, welcome to our second episode of YC Bytes. My name is Natalie- 

Sarah:

My name is Sarah- 

Natalie:

And we are from the Carers NSW Young Carer team.

Sarah:

We're back for a second episode!

Natalie:

We are, and very excited to be here.

Sarah:

Yeah, me too. So what's this episode about, Nat?

Natalie:

We focus on young carers moving through school. We know that for many young carers, this is a really interesting time in their life. If you think about what we heard in episode one and identifying with your caring role, this is, I guess, the time when a lot of young carers do identify.

Sarah:

Yeah, absolutely. And we know that going through school, I guess can be a tricky time anyway, and then you add a caring role into the mix while attending school, studying, trying to get good grades, trying to make friends, trying to fit in, and all the things that we have to navigate. So I think it's a really interesting topic that we're going to focus on today.

Natalie:

Absolutely. And to do that, we are so lucky to be able to have a chat with Finn as part of this episode. Finn cares for his two sisters living with ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder. He's in his final year of high school studying for his HSC.

Sarah:

What's HSC stand for, Nat?

Natalie:

He's studying for his Higher School Certificate-

Sarah:

Thank you.

Natalie:

... here in New South Wales and juggling lots of things and has a lot of really interesting insights.

Sarah:

Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and who you care for?

Finn:

My name's Finn, I'm 17 years old and I've been caring for my older and younger sister with ASD since I was in Year 5.

Sarah:

And what are some of the things you do to help support your sisters?

Finn:

I mainly just try to be a support network in case they need to come or need to discuss with me about what's going on or how they're feeling, but it's mainly just someone that they can lean on or they can come to if they need me.

Sarah:

Yeah. Cool. And what year are you in at school?

Finn:

Year 12.

Sarah:

Year 12. Okay. So HSC?

Finn:

Yeah.

Sarah:

So as we mentioned a little bit earlier, in this episode, we are focusing on young carers as they move and navigate their way through school. What's your experience been like at school, I guess, up until now? So have you felt comfortable sharing your young carer journey with teachers? Is it something that you don't often speak about with your teachers?

Finn:

I'll admit, until recently because I'm coming to the end of it, it's mainly been something I've tried keeping separate. I don't particularly see and I've never really seen it as something that I would really need to get other people involved with unless it was my family or whatever because it was never really a duty as such, it was just looking after my sisters. But besides that, there's only one teacher who I've ever really talked to about it, and it's just because I'm a student at school.

Sarah:

And what do you think helped you chat with that particular teacher? Was there a time where you were like, "My education is being impacted, so I feel like I'm now going to ask for some support"?

Finn:

It was to do with early entry actually because for one of the things, I definitely felt that, especially in the last year or year and a half, because my sister had graduated half a year early and she's now in her second year at uni, but during that time period when she was trying to move on, I kind of took my focus off school to try and help her. So I was mainly having chats about early entry in regards to possibly getting something written regarding my experience.

He's a person that I do look up to. I have huge respect for him. He's the kind of guy who, especially when it comes to anything psychological, emotionally, he always puts that as a main preference, even above assignments and stuff. And he pretty much just chatted with me. He saw that I was not on my best, I guess, mindset at that moment in time when it came to schoolwork. So he took me aside and he talked to me about it and we got through it. And then I learned more about what a carer was and as such and I actually built myself back to where I'm more comfortable at what I'm doing.

Sarah:

Yeah, cool. So being in Year 12, big year, what's it been like for you, I guess juggling studying, and also caring and supporting your sisters?

Finn:

Because I'm in Year 12, look, my final's coming up, my parents have emphasized the idea of me taking as much as I can or as much as I feel I have to take a step away so they can hold it down if need be so I can put a lot more focus on. But prior to this, it's really just been on and off. Whenever they needed me, I was there. I still am.

Sarah:

What do you feel are the main types of support that would've helped you or have helped you over the years at school? Has there been anything you've accessed or you wish you did access?

Finn:

If I'm going to be very honest with you, I actually only learned about the actual term of a young carer, it would've been maybe the beginning of last year. Before that, I never really knew what it was. My parents told me about it and I'll admit, there was times when definitely it was sometimes a lot more difficult and stuff. So as a result of me not knowing, I thought it was just normal or whatever. But now that I've got, obviously, young carers, this is definitely a big beneficial thing for me as well as my parents, they've always been there for me. I know they always still will be and they're kind of dealing with the... But besides that, I didn't really know about what it was. So I think just if I had more knowledge, I could probably answer the question better, but I just didn't really know.

Sarah:

Yeah. And you're definitely not alone in that experience. In our first episode, we spoke about identification and how young carers can be quite hidden. If your school, or if you had teachers talk about young carers early on, do you think you would have put your hand up to receive supports, or do you think you still would've navigated school the way you have been over the past few years?

Finn:

I think it would've really depended on the situation or how I was feeling because the thing was, even though I was told, even now, the term young carers, I still try to grasp what that means to me personally. So even if I was told in school, I don't really know if I would 100% have stepped up to say, "Yes, I am one," because I don't know if in that time I would've understood that I was or not.

Sarah:

So are there any key messages or takeaways you want to leave our listeners with today?

Finn:

More than okay to ask for help from someone else. Lean on someone else because you can't deal with everything all the time by yourself. It just becomes too much and then you can't really help others if they need it.

Natalie:

So we've spoken before about how a big part of our role is to help raise awareness of young carers in the community. One of the ways we do this is through our Young Carer Awareness Training. So this is a free workshop that service providers and educators can contact us to receive. And often it involves us speaking about young carers, providing some background for those who might not be aware of who young carers are. We speak about supporting young carers to identify and how professionals can connect young carers with support as well once they realise that they are in that caring role.

Sarah:

I guess in your experience, what's the best part of the training for some of the educators and service providers we've spoken to?

Natalie:

It's definitely the young carer story. When we bring a young carer with us to these sessions and they get an opportunity to share their lived experience, it is invaluable to our audiences and it's always the best part of any session for us as well. If you're working for a school in New South Wales at the moment, and you want to do more to support students with caring responsibilities, check out the NSW government resource, ‘Being a Carer, Being a Student and Being a Kid’. This resource for schools provides information for principals, teachers, and student wellbeing support staff about supporting students who are young carers. It can be downloaded from the NSW Department of Education website. And we will also pop a link in the show notes on today's episode. 

Thinking about schools that have been a little reluctant to receive our training in the past, often they're quite surprised when we share with them looking at the numbers and the data that exists for young carers in New South Wales, there is most likely at least one young carer in every classroom and many schools are quite taken aback by this statistic. If you aren't aware of any young carers in your school, please reach out as well because we really would love to chat with you more and help you support your students to the best of your ability so that they can, in turn, achieve their highest potential.

Sarah:

And I think that number is quite powerful. I remember speaking to a younger young carer not too long ago and the concept of being a young carer was very new to her. And I shared that number with her and the look on her face was incredible because you could see the penny drop and go, "Oh my goodness, there could be people in my school, in my grade that are sharing a similar experience to me."

Natalie:

If you are interested in receiving young carer awareness training at your workplace or in your school, please reach out to us by emailing yc@carersnsw.org.au, or give us a call on (02) 9280 4744.

Sarah:

We also had the opportunity to meet and chat with Tommasina, a school psychologist who highlights the importance of supporting young carers at school.

Natalie:

Thanks, Tommasina, for joining us today. Would you mind please introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about your role?

Tommasina:

It's my pleasure, Natalie. I'm an educational and developmental psychologist and one of the roles that I work in is as a school psychologist.

Natalie:

Amazing. So in your experience as a school psychologist, do you find that students often chat with you about being a young carer or is this something that usually kind of comes up after you start chatting with them about other things?

Tommasina:

Through my experience working as a school psychologist, I've never had a student in the primary school setting or a high school setting present. And the reason for their presentation to counselling was primarily because they were a carer. It's usually because they're going through, quite typically, a transition point. And during the course of counselling, the young carer role becomes more evident.

Natalie:

Incredible. And we know from working with you that your awareness of young carers is exceptional. Would you like to share a bit about why you have such an awareness of young carers as they present to you and you're able to have those conversations with them?

Tommasina:

I guess primarily is from a personal perspective. So I was a young carer as well. I have a mother and two siblings, all three with disability. So I can really identify the sort of difficulties a young carer may hold, especially in the school setting. So when I see carers present and they talk about, especially their friendships and how they relate to friends and they're always so focused on other, just little clues like that, I sort of dig a bit deeper and inevitably the young role sort of becomes more evident.

Natalie:

Can you think of any important milestones or times in a student's schooling journey where a young carer might want to reach out for extra support? So we're thinking maybe around exam time or studying for their Higher School Certificate in their final years of school.

Tommasina:

I think major transition points is when a young carer usually encounters the counselling service or encounter a staff member, but it might not be identified immediately that that's a young carer. And when I'm thinking of transition points, I'm thinking of that transition from year six into high school, moving into a new school, or moving into another school system from private to public, or the other way around. Other transition points would be moving from Year 10 into their senior years and considering subject selection. And definitely in that HSC period, Year 12. Year 12 is usually when the young carers encounter the counselling service.

Natalie:

So I guess thinking about what's in it for the young carer, when encouraging a young carer to reach out for support, what would you share with them as being some of the benefits of doing so?

Tommasina:

Sometimes, or quite often actually, I have to frame those supports for different reasons rather than it's because they are a young carer because I find a lot of resistance with that title. I think the biggest difficulty for young carers is this whole concept of young carer. Firstly, a lot of students wouldn't consider themselves to be young carers. They would know that their home life is very different. They would know that they have extra chores, extra obligations compared to same-age peers. They would see that. And I think out of survival, self-protection, and also protection of their loved ones, they may not declare that or if they do declare it, it would mainly be to another friend, and even through the counselling process may even reject that title, especially when it comes to their parent. There could be a lot of fear, "What if people found out that mum or dad's not coping and I have to do a lot of the self-care for my younger or older sibling or sibling with disability? And what are the ramifications of that disclosure?"

Natalie:

Protecting parents definitely is a big one. And even in episode one, our young carer spoke about protecting her sister who she cares for. So I think all those elements combined can be a very complex space for some young carers to kind of find the support they need while managing everything else can be really challenging.

Tommasina:

Also, I think knowing that your life is so different is so emotionally loaded and to have that conversation means connecting with quite a lot of vulnerability. So it's almost easier to just sort of carry on and try and fit in and sit with the consequences of not submitting things on time, not having your books, forgetting things in class. And it's almost easier to sit with those consequences rather than to declare, "Hey, home life's really hard." And sometimes, especially if you don't identify as a young carer or you don't know you're a young carer, you may think that the teacher might think that that's just an excuse. So there could be a lot of fear around that as well.

Natalie:

Do you think there are any benefits for teachers and school staff knowing that a student might have a caring role?

Tommasina:

Absolutely. I think teachers and the support staff around teachers such as learning support, such as a school counselling service and a welfare team, deputies and principal all have a great role, especially in the high school setting with the year advisors. There is so much support that a young carer could access. I think what's most important though, is more education to staff about what it means to be a young carer and to look at it from a strengths-based perspective rather than a deficit perspective.

The skills that they obtain from this lived experience are absolutely phenomenal. The empathy, the compassion, the patience, their ability to think out of the box, their knowledge of systems is absolutely phenomenal and sometimes can be more advanced than a lot of adults that actually even work in the field. They have so much to offer our society and our school communities and especially in a leadership perspective, but they really need the right type of support.

Natalie:

Do you have any suggestions or examples of some things that schools or teaching staff might be able to do to support young carers better in their respective communities?

Tommasina:

Quite often, what young carers need is real practical support and support that's tailored to them. So I think we need to be very careful not to make assumptions about these students' lived experience because every young carer's experience is so different. Keeping an eye on the child, seeing what their organisational skills are like. They might be a bit tired, they might be a bit disorganised. So they might forget their lunch, they might not bring all their school supplies. So having a little bit of leeway, gentle reminders for permission notes not being sent in, track how they're traveling, maybe having a locker system, if they're underperforming, to check in with the child.

A sibling or a parent might be in hospital during that time, there could be something that's quite significant. I think looking at testing or exam provisions, extending deadlines for assignments. Those little things can really take the pressure off a young carer. And if, of course, a young carer is presenting with significant anxiety or associated depression, we do then link him with external services to provide that wraparound support in the community and the school and in the home setting.

I guess what I'd like to say to young carers is if you're hearing this and you're feeling very emotional, or if you talk to someone and you feel very emotional, that's okay. It doesn't mean you're not coping. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. So I just want to say that vulnerability, it doesn't feel nice, it doesn't feel comfortable, it can feel scary to declare or to even share, but that's actually the superpower of a young carer and a carer. And once you are with a safe person that can help you understand it and harness that energy, you can move forward in ways that you would never anticipate or think was possible.

Natalie:

Thanks for listening to this episode. We hope you have found the conversation interesting.

Sarah:

We invite you to put your creative hats on and think about more ways schools can be aware of students who are young carers and how they can provide supports to young carers when needed. If you're a young carer or you know a young carer who needs practical support, you can call Carer Gateway on 1800 422 737.

Natalie:

Join us for episode three, where we will speak with another young carer about their life after school, how that transition went for them, and moving into adulthood. Thanks for listening, bye!

Sarah:

Bye!