Wymondham High Academy is the latest Norfolk school to be awarded Caring Together’s Carer Friendly Tick Award – Education, in recognition of their work to identify and support carers.
The school has seen its accreditation renewed and has once again met the standards for the Carer Friendly Tick Award.
Lauren Sparrow, teacher and young carers champion at Wymondham High Academy, said, “I am delighted that we have successfully renewed our Carer Friendly Tick Award – Education for the second time after a lot of hard work and dedication from staff and students.
This is something we want to shout about as we believe it shows that our commitment to identifying and supporting our young carers over time is still going strong and we really care about them here at Wymondham High.
We also feel it’s important to raise awareness amongst staff and students who are not young carers so we can celebrate our diversity and show empathy towards all members of our community. Working towards this award makes our young carers feel supported and seen as they progress through the school.”
On behalf of Caring Together, a panel of carers assessed the submission from the academy. They were particularly impressed by:
- plans to have more named staff as young carers champions, ensuring there is always support available for those young carers that need it;
- the range of activities to raise awareness of young carers including a young carers badge;
- young carers having the opportunity to share their views on the academy’s young carers agreement and any changes needed;
- the use of digital communications such as Microsoft Teams and Twitter (X) to share information with young carers.
Claire Rogers, Carer Awareness and Voice Coordinator at Caring Together said, “Lauren is an absolute powerhouse and continues to consider new ways to raise awareness of young carers at Wymondham High and ways to support young carers in the school. The young carers seem to really value the lunchtime session and enjoy coming along with their friends. Keep up the amazing work Lauren and all at Wymondham High.”
Caring Together works to help raise the awareness of carers in the community with health, social care and education professionals, and employers.
The Carer Friendly Tick Award was originally developed for education by young carers from Caring Together’s Norfolk Young Carers Forum (NYCF) project. The success of this meant the awards have been rolled out across Norfolk, Peterborough and Cambridgeshire to now include community, health and employer awards.
These recognise the valuable work done in identifying and supporting carers carried out by each type of organisations. The Carer Friendly Tick is a set of standards which were designed with carers, and which are assessed entirely by carers.
For more information about the Carer Friendly Tick Award please visit caringtogether.org/carer-friendly-tick or email [email protected]
