Caring for Carers: a student-led investigation of

specific learning development needs

Alexander J. Cuthbert

alexander.cuthbert@strath.ac.uk

• Background

• Project Overview

• Key Findings

• Resultant Resources

• Impact and Recent Developments

• Some Reflections on Collaborative Practice

• References

• Appendix: Caring for Carers (an animated

overview)

Who are Student Carers?

Strathclyde has adopted the definition used by the Carers Trust:

‘a carer is anyone who cares, unpaid, for a friend or family

member who due to illness, a disability, a mental health

problem or an addiction cannot cope without support’.

‘Students with caring responsibilities are a hidden group within

Higher Education and are a key area of emerging focus for the

University of Strathclyde. UCAS do not currently routinely collect

information on Student Carers, and even if they attempted to it is

likely that this group would suffer from the same under-self-

reporting as Care Leavers (due to the perceived stigma attached to

these groups)’.

Al Blackshaw, Widening Access Team, University of Strathclyde

Student Carers: Identity and Resilience

‘I feel like a proper student when I’m at uni, on the days

I’m in. I check my phone but I still do more. It feels like I

might actually know what I’m doing’.

‘Angela’, Student Carer

‘As a Student Carer myself, I understand the complexity of

undertaking full-time study whilst fulfilling my caring role. It’s not

easy – that’s why I was enthusiastic to be part of the Caring for

Carers project at the University of Strathclyde, and I really want this

project to make a difference to all the carers who study and work

there’.

Joan Milroy, ‘Caring for Carers’ Widening Access Intern.

..Three out of five of us will become carers at

some stage in our lives and 1 in 10 of us is

already fulfilling some sort of caring role’.

The Carers Trust (Scotland), 2015

‘There are at least 759,000 carers aged

16 and over in Scotland and 29,000

young carers (under 18)…

The Trust found that the impact of caring can be significant for learners:

• Half the days carers were due on campus were affected due to lateness,

having to leave early, or through absence.

• Carers are four times more likely to not complete than their peers.

• 42% of Student Carers were forced to work to support themselves and

their dependents while studying.

Background

Aims and Methods

• A1: Investigate potential barriers students with caring responsibilities

may encounter and to create resources to minimise their impact.

• A2: To establish how the University could better inform staff regarding

the experiences of student carers.

• M1: Interpret any existing qualitative Widening Access data.

• M2: Acquire experiences of current Student Carers.

• M3: Conduct a review of relevant literature.

• M4: Review existing Student Services.

• M5: Identify effective communication and dissemination pathways.

Timescale and Collaboration

• A 4 week internship beginning 31/05/2016.

• Outputs were shared online (VLE) within 4 weeks of the project’s completion.

• Funded wholly by the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE).

• Resources to be reviewed June 2017, with input from Student Carers Committee and Student Carers Group.

• Led by an undergraduate research intern recruited by the University of Strathclyde’s Widening Access Team and supported by the Study Skills Service.

Findings: 6 Key Themes

1. Recognition & respect: at an institutional, classroom, and 1-2-1 level.

2. Information & access: signposted support at various points of access (throughout the ‘student life cycle’).

3. Economic security: financial advice and monetary assistance.

4. Carer services: dedicated, tailored support, offering advocacyand empowering Carers voices.

5. Education & training: campus-wide awareness and appropriatelytrained staff able to identify and negotiate‘reasonable adjustments’.

6. Health & wellbeing: robust and proactive health and mental healthservices; a campus culture that promotes caringand inclusion positively.

3 Take-away Messages

I. Student Carers are often ‘hidden’ – this may be because they donot want to self-identify as a carer or the system does notrecognise them (Theme 1).

II. Recognising our Student Carers and making sure their wellbeing is supported is an essential first step (Themes 2, 4 & 6).

III. A range of focussed, proactive support will lead to better student retention, satisfaction, and outcomes (Themes 2, 3, 4, 5).

‘Young people and adults with experience of providing care hold

many qualities and successes and it is essential that these are

recognised and nurtured so that carers can reach their full potential‘.

Joan Milroy, ‘Caring for Carers’ (2016).

Resources:

VLE and Student Carers Webpage:

Resources:

VLE and Student Carers Webpage:

Resources:

VLE and Student Carers Webpage

Immediate Impact and the Future:

• A Student Carers Committee (convened November 2016)comprising of support services staff and student carers. Thepurpose of the committee is to discuss support initiatives andstrategies.

• A Student Carers Group established to allow students to meetinformally on campus.

• The University is currently drafting a Student Carers Policy thatwill outline the institution's commitment to the experiences of itsdiverse student body and offer guidance to staff regardingfacilitating ‘Reasonable Adjustments’ for Student Carers.

Immediate Impact and the Future:

• Strathclyde has taken additional steps to identify StudentCarers, such as having additional links to the Student Carerswebpage added to different areas of the University website andinvestigating the feasibility of having a ‘tick-box’ at onlineregistration.

• Widening Access are collaborating with the Carers Trust to host aconference: ‘Going Higher for Student Carers – Showcase andLearning Exchange’ (24/03/2017). The conference was attendedby HE practitioners, MSPs, and Student Carers.

‘As the project is taken forward it would be good to hear of the

success stories of those student carers who make it to graduation.

It was a privilege to have worked on such an important project and I

gained insight into how to achieve a better balance which led to

greater sense of wellbeing’.

Joan Milroy

Current Collaborations

• In addition to Widening Access, Study Skills work with a cluster ofSupport and Wellbeing Services who are collectively developing acasework recording system to make this support more coherent,consistent, efficient, and responsive to the diverse needs of students.

• Working closely with teaching colleagues across the Universitybroadens our knowledge of both ‘signature’ and emerging pedagogies.

• We also work closely with student associations and peer networks(including Mature Students’ Association, Strathclyde Student Union, andFaculty peer supporters).

• In 2016, we supported 3 Widening Access intern projects and wecontinue to offer LD support to undergraduate researchers on theannual ‘Research Interns@Strathclyde’ scheme.

Collaboration and LD Practice:Some Reflections

‘We vehemently argue that critical theory supports self-reflection,

collaborative reflective rational discourse and enquiry, validated through

consensus within a sociopolitical context. Thus the implications for

teaching suggest that the reflective practitioner can model both

reflexivity and reflective learning to empower critically reflective

learners’.

Lawrence-Wilkes & Ashmore, The Reflective Practitioner in Professional

Education (2014), p.66

Collaboration and LD Practice:Some Reflections

R1. Collaborative engagement, embedding, co-construction, and the

inevitable self-reflection that such activities bring about, invite me to

frequently consider my role and function as a learning developer.

R2. As well as widening my understanding of what constitutes ‘higher

education’ learning, and the contexts and environments in which it

takes place, I see the relationship between activity and identity

constantly being foregrounded and reformulated, both for learners and

for myself.

R3. Collaborative working can be a destabilising and challenging process,

and I feel my practice is developing in ways that I had not previously

envisaged as a result.

R1: The Value of Collaborative Practice

‘We know that collaboration is important for improving access for

under-represented groups on the inter-institutional and inter-

organisational level, and this is no less true at the local, practice

level’. Universities UK (2015)

‘Practitioners should insist on real collaboration as opposed to

surface collaboration, and they must not shirk the radical challenges

that this might pose (Lunsford 1991, p.9). For collaboration to be

real rather than surface, we argue that there must surely be an

attempt to reduce as far as possible the hierarchies inherent in the

traditional university’. Sinfield et al. (2011), p.57

Macro and micro level collaborative practice can have significant impact

R2: The Learning Developer: a Constructed Identity

‘Once practitioners notice that they actively construct the reality

of their practice and become aware of the variety of frames

available to them, they begin to see the need to reflect-in-action

on their previously tacit frames’. Schon (1982)

Practitioners ‘must also learn how to become an occasional

stranger to the habits and established practice of his profession,

i.e., to see and question the rationality of the trails of everyday

practice […] we need to establish interprofessional reflection too

[…] because the individual professions will continuously be

confronted with ‘‘foreign’’ questions, terms, concepts and

perspectives (Wackerhausen 2009, pp.470-1).

Collaborative practices have the potential to challenge hierarchies

Collaborative practices have enabled me to understand the constructed

nature of my role

R3: The Learning Developer: a ‘Subaltern Role’?

Autoethnography as contextualised critical reflection.

An approach that ‘places the self of the researcher and/or narrator

within a social context. It refers to works that provoke questions

about the nature of ethnographic knowledge by troubling the

persistent dichotomies of insider versus outsider, distance and

familiarity, objective observer versus participant, and individual

versus culture’.

‘Moreover, it reflects a view of ethnography as both a reflexive and

a collaborative enterprise, in which the life experiences of the

anthropologist and our relationships with our interlocutors should be

interrogated and explored’.

Reed-Danahay, ‘Autoethnography’, 2017

R3: The Learning Developer: a ‘Subaltern Role’? A Work in Progress…

‘Marginal physical location, lack of engagement with

university committee systems and policy-making processes

and only partial integration into the information loop are

common characteristics of learning development units and

their staff. Cultural, organisational, and social marginalisation

add to the remedial image fixes both function and staff in a

subaltern role’. Verity and Trowler (2010), p.243

The instability of my identity as a learning developer necessities

collaborative working to establish an extended community of

practice, to attain institutional alignment, and for professional

self-definition.

One challenge will be to ensure that my plastic, ‘subaltern role’,

is used to challenge institutional hierarchies while recognising

that I am being increasingly drawn into their orbit.

References

Banks, P., Cogan, N., Riddell, S., Deeley, S., Hill, M.,& Tisdall, K., ‘Does the covert nature of caring prohibit the development of effective services

for young carers?’, British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 30:3, 2002, 229-246

Day, C., ‘Young adult carers: a literature review informing the re-conceptualisation of young adult caregiving in Australia’, Journal of Youth

Studies, 18:7, 2015, 855-866

‘Going Higher in Scotland’, 2015. https://carers.org/going-higher-scotland

‘Information for Student Carers’, Widening Access, University of Strathclyde,

http://www.strath.ac.uk/sees/wideningaccess/gettingin/informationforstudentcarers/

Lawrence-Wilkes,L & Ashmore, L The Reflective Practitioner in Professional Education, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2014

‘Manifesto for Unpaid Carers in Scotland’ (2016)’. https://carers.org/news-item/national-carer-organisations-release-manifesto

Moore, McArthur, and Morrow, ‘Attendance, achievement and participation: Young carers’ experiences of school in Australia’, Australian Journal

of Education, 53:1 2009

‘National Carer Strategy Action Plan’, https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/disability-and-carers/publications-articles/national-carer-

strategy-action-plan-2011-2014

‘Research Interns@Strathclyde’, University of Strathclyde, http://www.strath.ac.uk/studywithus/ scholarships/researchinternsstrathclyde/

Reed-Danahay, D, ‘Autoethnography’, Oxford University Bibliographies Online, 2017

Schon, D A, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action. Basic Books, USA, 1983

Sinfield, Holley, Burns, Hoskins, O’Neill and Harrington,‘Raising the Student Voice: Learning Development as Social Practice’, in Learning

Development in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan: London 2010, 53-63

Universities UK, ‘Working in partnership: enabling social mobility in higher education – the final report of the Social Mobility Advisory Group’,

2015

Verity, M & Trowler, P, ‘Looking back and looking into the future’ in P Hartley, J Hilsdon, S Sinfield, C Keenan & M Verity (eds), Learning

development in higher education. Palgrave Macmillan: London, 2010, 241-252

Wackerhausen, S, ‘Collaboration, professional identity and reflection across boundaries’, Journal of Interprofessional Care, Sept 2009; 23(5):

455-473

Appendix: Caring for Carers (an animated overview)