Supporting Student Carers at College

That the Parliament welcomes Supporting Student Carers at College, an innovative digital training module developed by Carers Trust Scotland in partnership with the College Development Network and funded by the Scottish Funding Council that helps college professionals to better understand the challenges faced by many student carers and provides guidance on how to improve support for these students at their colleges; appreciates that this training module is the first of its kind in Scotland; recognises the important unpaid caring responsibilities that student carers have for a family member or friend with a disability, mental illness and/or addiction problem; notes that there are over 10,000 student carers attending Scotland’s colleges and that they are not always recognised by education professionals as undertaking a caring role; understands that student carers are four times more likely to drop out of further education than students who are not carers; appreciates that having unpaid caring responsibilities can have consequences for the positive destination options after study; understands that student carers can greatly benefit from dedicated support provision from their college, and believes that appropriate training for colleges should be endorsed to ensure that student carers are better supported and have a fair chance to be successful in their own education and achieve their true potential in all aspects of their lives.