3.3  Named contact for student carers

I put on my UCAS form that I was a young carer, so this meant that universities knew before I attended that I was. But before starting university and obviously my first year, I wasn’t aware that there was any support at my university, so I wasn’t getting any support or any advice or help from my university. Even if it was there, they didn’t tell me, so I didn’t know.

I think universities should tell students, either before they attend or in the first couple of weeks, that they can get help and support as early as they need it if they have a place that they can go to talk to someone or get advice, because I think that would have been helpful for me, especially in the first semester when I really did struggle. I think support they could offer could just be talking over stuff, like just talking through, like when my brother is really anxious, it makes me anxious, so mental health support would be good.

But also if something happens to my brother and I have to go home, I’m going to have to maybe get an extension on an assignment or miss a tutorial, which at my university it’s mandatory to go to all tutorials, you can fail the class if you miss more than two. So, if something happens at home and I have to go home to help my family, because it’s not happened to me, I can’t get a doctor’s note to prove it, so sometimes lecturers don’t allow you an extension or to miss a tutorial, they don’t count it as an agreed absence, and I could fail to that.

And I think if the student has said they’re a young carer, just having it in place that something could happen at home, that they might have to leave or get an extension for so that if it does happen, I know that I will be able to go home as well as do my work just a bit later. And that way I’m not worried about my work while I’m worried about my family and trying to help them.’

I think the first thing you have to do as a university to support carers, advice I would give universities to support carers, the first thing you would have to do is make it clear, your stance on student carers. Don’t make them have to go to you and ask, because it’s not going to be a consideration to ask half the time. They’ve got too much else on their mind. Make it clear, have it as a whole section on your website. In your support section, make sure that they know you have at least a paragraph about what you’re giving a carer. Or put it down in your prospectus or brochure. Even going in to schools, to the high schools, having someone go in when they’re in third year, so before they sit their exams, to make sure they know that university is an option and that they’re going to get support to go is going to make it a lot more likely that they’re going to try harder in exams and actually consider going, because you don’t; as a carer, you don’t consider uni as a feasible option half the time. So make you stance clear, so any carers in school know they can go to your uni, that you will support them in their education.

… don’t make the carers jump through hoops. Don’t make them go to you, go to them. Don’t make them have to go and tell each of their lecturers separately that they’re a carer as well as a student. Have it so that their lecturers will have it on system and have it clear to them that they have so many carers in their class, and that they need to consider that. And my uni, you do authorised absence forms. So, as a carer, you don’t always manage to make it to class. If you’ve got to take the person you care for to an appointment, or if you’ve been up with them all night because they’ve been ill and you’ve had no sleep and you don’t make it to class, then have it so that they don’t have to lie on the authorised absence for that they were unwell or they had an appointment. Have it clear that you can put down ‘I am a carer, I had a care issue.’