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Five-session mentoring course

Young carers: balancing care and school

Who it's for

Consider this course for a pupil showing:

  • Consistent tiredness, lateness, or unfinished homework without an obvious cause
  • Reluctance to attend after-school clubs, trips or activities that run late
  • Unusual maturity or protectiveness when discussing home life
  • Anxiety about being contacted at school, or about being away from home for long periods
  • Limited peer friendships, or difficulty relating to the usual concerns of the pupil's age group

What it works towards

  • Recognise and validate the pupil's caring role without treating it as a problem to be fixed
  • Build practical strategies for balancing caring responsibilities with school and personal time
  • Reduce isolation by connecting the pupil to other young carers and appropriate support services
  • Support the pupil to communicate the pupil's needs to school in a way that feels comfortable
  • Strengthen the pupil's sense of identity beyond the caring role

The five sessions

  1. Session 1 Getting to know my role Pupil can describe the pupil's caring responsibilities in the pupil's own words and feel heard without judgement.
  2. Session 2 Balancing my time Pupil can identify where caring responsibilities and school demands compete, and name one area of tension.
  3. Session 3 What helps me cope Pupil can name at least two coping strategies or moments of rest that work for the pupil.
  4. Session 4 Getting support Pupil can name at least one person or service, beyond the mentor, the pupil could go to for support.
  5. Session 5 My young carer plan Pupil has a personalised plan and knows how to flag it if the pupil's caring responsibilities change.

A sixth session follows, without the pupil: the mentor writes the support plan and agrees next steps.

The approach, and where it comes from

This course takes a strength-based approach: young carers often manage their responsibilities with real skill and maturity, and sessions aim to build on that rather than frame caring as purely a deficit. It reflects DfE's inclusion of young carers in the statutory school census since 2023 and the Young Carers in Schools programme, and supports Ofsted's Personal Development and Inclusion focus, which expects schools to identify and support pupils whose circumstances outside school affect engagement and attainment.

Try it with a small group

Three weeks free, no card, up to three staff and ten pupils. Everything recorded during the trial carries over if you continue.

Start the free pilot

Or read the white paper, which sets out the evidence behind each of the twenty courses.

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