6B. Case Study – Connor
ParentTalk virtual peer support group:
Community Mental Health – adults of working age (CMHT – A)
Helping Connor – a case study
The following case study was developed by MyTime Young Carers. Please read it, then use the questions at the end as a starting point for your own reflections and learning.
Connor lives with his mum, Sandy and younger sister, Elsie. Sandy has a substance use disorder and lives with a mental health condition. She’s out of work and often withdraws to bed for days on end. With Sandy often bed-bound, Connor is often absent from school. Sandy has told Connor that if he tells anyone what things are like at home, they might take him away. Connor is frightened by this, so barely says a word in school. He internalises a belief that his whole identity is somehow wrong, although he doesn’t understand why.
His attendance at school is very low and he is nowhere near meeting age-related expectations. His teachers are exasperated by his work and behaviour, and he knows it; he believes himself to be useless at everything – a belief compounded by the fact that he has never been able to make his Mum feel better -and develops very low self-esteem. Ashamed by his academic inadequacy, he avoids schoolwork at all costs, rarely completing homework and often disrupting classes instead of doing the work assigned. Teachers respond with disciplinary action, building on Connor’s resentment of school.
After a series of temporary exclusions, he is sent to a Pupil Referral Unit, where he is frightened by the other children but knows he must not show it. Connor leaves school with no GCSEs. His Pupil Referral Unit enrol him in a local, mainstream college where he is encouraged to study Level 1 Brickwork as a practical subject to study although he has no interest in the building trade. He is also told he will need to retake his Maths and English GCSEs. This further fuels Connor’s belief that he’s not good enough.
Connor rarely attends college and when he does he is not engaging in class or completing assessments. His personal tutor tries to engage him but this is ignored by Connor. He refuses to engage with the NEET team (for children Not in Education, Employment or Training) due to ever-increasing issues such as depression, low self-worth, low self-confidence and low aspirations. Besides, he has enough on his plate caring for his mum.
Questions for reflection and discussion
- For each stage of Connor’s childhood and adolescence, which agencies have statutory responsibilities for him? What are these responsibilities?
- What factors prevent Connor’s needs being identified and addressed? What arrangements are in place in Dorset to reduce the risk of this happening here? What gaps remain in these arrangements? The most significant factor preventing Connor’s needs from being identified was a lack of awareness of young carers across the settings he moved through. Without that awareness, his behaviour was interpreted as a conduct problem rather than a response to his caring role and home circumstances, which led to disciplinary action rather than support. In Dorset, MYTIME Young Carers works alongside the local authority to reduce this risk in a number of ways. We deliver training to education settings to help staff understand who young carers are and how to identify them. The local authority has allocated workers who provide direct support to young carers and their families. MYTIME Young Carers and the local authority also work together to give young carers access to breaks via our Making Memories Programme and also support via our Employability Programme. A gap that remains is access in rural parts of Dorset, where young people face real barriers to reaching support and services due to geography.
- Imagine that Connor’s needs began to be identified around the time that he started school. What would a strengths-based, multi-agency response look like in this situation? What might be the positive impacts of such a response? Had Connor been identified as a young carer when entering school, a different picture could have unfolded. Staff training would have helped connect the dots across the school, even if Connor only shared small pieces of information with different people. Whole-school awareness activities and assemblies would have helped him understand he was not alone and may have given him the confidence to come forward. A trusted adult, such as an Emotional Literacy Support Assistant (ELSA) or Young Carer Champion, could have provided consistent support and reduced the need for exclusions. Once identified, Connor could have been referred to MYTIME and registered with the local authority. Through MYTIME he could have accessed Making Memories days, giving him a break from his caring role and a peer group who understood his experience. The Level Up schools programme would have provided structured identification support and a clear pathway to further help. As he moved toward further education, the Employability Programme could have helped Connor recognise the skills his caring role had already built and explore pathways that matched his genuine strengths, rather than being placed on a course by default. One-to-one careers support and a peer network of young carers could have significantly improved his confidence and sense of future. At 18, a transition assessment with the local authority would have ensured Connor was aware of adult carer support and did not fall through the gap as children’s services stepped back.
