At St John’s we provide support and advice for our young carers and their families. Our young carers have two designated leads within the school - Mrs Veronica Pellant and Miss Pellant - who they can access at any point if they have a problem and need support. They also have an external support worker from ‘Young Carers Kent ‘Imago’, who comes into school to support the children and works with their families in the home.

Our young carers benefit from a monthly support session with Mrs Pellant, where they can share their concerns/worries or by means of their self-initiated ’Worry Box`. At these sessions they have enjoyed crafts, gardening, games, cooking and many other activities and really enjoy having a new circle of friends that experience the same or similar responsibilities to them.

Young carers have their own notice board in school, which signposts how they can access help internally and externally. This also shows the pictures of both leads so that younger carers know who they are too. The young carers' art work is displayed around this notice board. Timetables of future ‘Young Carer Group’ meetings are posted around the school so that they know and are informed when they will happen.

All teachers and staff have been made aware of the young carers in our school. The teachers and staff of our young carers and are informed of the needs of individual young carers from their classes and how being a young carer may impact on their school and home life. Advice is given to them in how they can support with this. The staff notice board has young carer information on it.

So that our young carers' voices can be heard and acted upon we provide a questionnaire to assess how they feel about the support we provide.

The future at St John's for our young carers looks very exciting, and we are planning some exciting activities for them.

We welcome our Designated Governor David Milham who is the Vice Chair of the Governing Body. He is supporting our Young Carers and brings support from our local Rotary Club for future young carer events.

We have received the Bronze Award for Young Carers in schools, of which we are very proud. It is paramount that as a school we support and listen to our young carers and we endeavour to meet their needs and empower them to ask and gain support from us.