Membership Spotlight highlights the work of our member organisations and outlines how other individuals and NGOs can support them. We are shining the light on Carers Trust Scotland who have now been a member of Together for three years. They want individuals and NGOs to support Young Carers Action Day! They support our new campaign #RightsOnTrack.

Paul Traynor, Head of External Affairs, Carers Trust Scotland

Carers Trust in Scotland works to transform the lives of unpaid carers. We work to improve support, services and recognition for anyone living with the challenges of caring, unpaid, for a family member or friend who is ill, frail, disabled or has mental health or addiction problems. We partner with our network of local carer organisations to provide funding and support, deliver innovative and evidence-based programmes and raise awareness and influence policy.​

We also host the Scottish Young Carers Services Alliance, an informal network of young carers services across Scotland. It has 51 members who provide support to young carers.

Carers Trust’s vision is that unpaid carers are heard and valued, with access to support, advice and resources to enable them to live fulfilled lives.

Carers Trust Scotland is a passionate supporter of Together’s #RightsOnTrack campaign, which is all about making sure that all children in Scotland have all of their rights all of the time. If you click here you can sign up to Together’s #RightsOnTrack mailing list.

Spotlight

Young Carers Action Day (YCAD), taking place on 13^th March 2024!

Young Carers Action Day is an annual event that takes place in mid-March, this year it’s taking place on Wednesday 13th March. The day is organised and led by Carers Trust, and we encourage as many organisations, communities and individuals as possible to take part in the day by taking action, supporting and raising awareness of young carers.

Following consultation with hundreds of young carers, this year’s theme is ‘Fair Futures for Young Carers”.

Caring for someone because of illness, disability or addition should not be a barrier to an equal opportunity in learning, earning or being able to participate and get on in life. But for far too many young carers and young adult carers across the country, it is. Our report released last March found that more than half (59%) of young carers in Scotland care for more than 20 hours each week, with 12% spending 50 hours or more providing unpaid care every week.

Young carers’ lives are made even more challenging by education and employment systems that fail to identify them, understand the diversity of their caring roles, or respond to their support needs. This is having a catastrophic impact on their ability to learn and ultimately to earn. Young carers are also significantly less likely to undertake higher education or enter employment than their peers.

Young carers and young adult carers need you to help us change things, locally and nationally. To help address this, Carers Trust is launching the first Young Carers Covenant on YCAD.

What is the Young Carers Covenant?

The Young Carers Covenant is a commitment to take action to support a fair future for all young carers and young adult carers across the UK. The Young Carers Covenant is a series of ten outcomes that young people with caring responsibilities have highlighted as being key to improving their lives. 

Examples of the outcomes include young carers and young adult carers:

• Being able to access and succeed in employment/training opportunities.
• Having time to themselves.
• Having good physical and mental health.
• Being able to access support for them and their families.
• Feel they have choice in their lives.

The Young Carers Covenant is based on the principles within the draft Commonwealth Young Carers Charter, which itself is grounded in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It has also been influenced by the approaches adopted in the Armed Forces Covenant and Care Leavers Covenant.

How to support the Young Carers Covenant?

Signatories pledge to take practical and meaningful action to support young carers and young adult carers, so they can have the same life opportunities as other children and young people.

Young carers and young adult carers are calling on organisations and individuals to sign the Young Carers Covenant. Examples of organisations that can sign up to the Young Carers Covenant include national governments, local authorities, schools, hospitals, businesses or charities.

It would be great if Together members can show their support for a fair future for all young carers and young adult carers by signing the Young Carers Covenant at http://www.carers.org/youngcarerscovenant and by promoting this through their networks.

Young Carers Challenge

On YCAD, Carers Trust Scotland are also delighted to be launching the Young Carers Challenge for schools in Scotland to better identify and support young carers.

The Young Carers Challenge calls for every school to:

• Have a Young Carers Champion so that every young carer has a trusted adult in school they can go to if things are difficult, or they need more support.
• Undertake all staff Young Carers Awareness Training,
• Have a young carers charter/policy, ideally designed with young carers so that every young carer knows what support is available to them in their school.
• Ensure young carers are correctly recorded on school system (SEEMiS) as a young carer.
• Have partnership links with local carer organisations so education staff and young carers know what support is available to them.

Better and earlier identification of young carers by schools, and provision of appropriate support for them, will help address the attainment and attendance challenges faced by so many of them.

Schools can register for the challenge here: https://youngcarersinschools.com/young-carers-challenge-scotland/

We are encouraging Together members to promote this with schools that they are engaged with and champion for them to sign up to the Young Carers Challenge.

How can children and young people make their views heard to influence our work?

We would encourage all young carers and young adult to get in touch with their local carers centre or young carers service to get more information about the support they may be entitled to and opportunities available.

Carers Trust Scotland supports two Members of the Scottish Youth Parliament who represent young carers and young adult carers, aged 12 – 25, across Scotland. We also host a national Advisory Group of young carers, which comes together to develop national engagement events and campaigns to ensure the views of young carers and young adult carers are heard.

Our Scottish Young Carers Festival is a great opportunity for us to consult with young carers in an engaging way and hear more about the issues that matter to them. From this and our wider consultation activities, we are able to focus our efforts to improve the support available for young carers and young adult carers.

How can organisations get involved or support our work?

You can find out more about Young Carers Action Day 2024 via the Carers Trust website. This includes a range of downloadable resources – that will help you engage and get the most out of this year’s Young Carers Action Day.

You can also follow and support our work on social media:

Twitter: @CarersTrustScot

Facebook: www.facebook.com/carers

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ycscotland/

We would be delighted if Together members could help us get our hashtag #YoungCarersActionDay trending on social media on 13 March 2024. Here is a suggested social media post, which it would be great if you could share on the day:

We are supporting #YoungCarersActionDay! It is vital to ensure a Fair Future for Young Carers and for #youngcarers to get the support they need to have a fair chance to prosper in all aspects of their lives.

Find out more 👉 https://bit.ly/3TlDLHh @CarersTrustScot For further information, please contact Paul Traynor, Head of External Affairs at Carers Trust Scotland – ptraynor@carers.org

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Are you a Together organisational member and would like to collaborate for a Membership Spotlight? Email: caitlin@togetherscotland.org.uk

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