Friday 30 June and 1,600 young carers from 87 projects across the UK descend on YMCA's Fairthorne Manor, near Southampton. They are there for the seventh annual Young Carers Festival, organised by The Children's Society.
Back by popular demand, a bhangra band has the masses learning new dance moves. Lose Tuiileila, a young carer and campaigner from New Zealand, opens the festival with a speech full of praise for the young people's practical and emotional support to their families and for the festival itself, the largest gathering of young carers in the world. There follows dazzling fireworks, a disco until midnight and very little sleep under the stars.
Saturday dawns to a packed programme of sports and workshops - canoeing, climbing, zip wire, face and T-shirt painting, banner making, yoga, music, dance and drama. And the young carers get the chance to air their views to MPs, the Office of the Children's Commissioner, teachers and media.
Space of their own
Many young carers help plan the festival each year by email, letter and a dedicated web site. The festival has become a safe place for large numbers of young carers. It is their festival and they are given lots of opportunities to express themselves through wishing walls, peer reporters, poetry, art, drama and their very own FM radio station.
Many of these young carers are seasoned campaigners and have attended the festival year after year. So what has the annual festival changed?
Nationally, the views gained at the festival have directly informed practice guidance and legislation, including Making it Work (2002) and the Department for Education and Skills' Guidance for young carers and their families.
Their experiences shine through the practice guidance for 2004's Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act, reinforcing whole family assessments and avoiding inappropriate levels of caring.
Young people have also helped shape an amendment to the education and inspections bill, which now reads: "Governing bodies ... must endeavour to identify any pupil who is a young carer, promote their educational welfare and ensure any pupil who is a carer is supported by a designated teacher or staff member responsible for promoting and co-ordinating such support."
Locally, says Jenny Frank, programme manager at The Children's Society, the annual festival has helped hundreds of young carers' projects "by uniting them as a single, powerful voice, raising awareness of their importance".
While money remains a problem for many projects, evidence indicates more are getting secure funding as children's trusts recognise their crucial value.
And for thousands of young carers, various evaluations show many benefits, including increased self-esteem, reduced experience of bullying, improved educational achievement and better services.
But when young carers met youth minister Beverley Hughes recently, they told her there was much to do, especially in schools. So they decided this year's festival theme would be Care to Learn? Learn to Care! - seeking to promote consistent practice in schools. All projects invited teachers to come to the festival, but few took up the offer. Not so Chamberlayne Park School in Southampton, which sent nine teachers, including the deputy head. Over the weekend, Hope, Charlotte, Ben, Ashley, Mitchell, Stephen, Gemma - pupils from the school - and teachers Sally Smart and Meg Tearle showed the festival what could be done by having a dedicated teacher and regular meetings.
"We meet twice a month and talk about the good and the bad things going on for us," says Gemma. "We share our feelings, eat food and have fun.
The meetings give us a chance to talk about our problems. It builds our confidence."
Practical support
The group describes how support is often practical, like setting up an after-school cooking club when young carers asked for more chances to learn to prepare economic and healthy meals.
Or when Hope's homework gets too much because of caring responsibilities: "I was struggling with my coursework," she says. "Miss spoke to my English teacher and we agreed I'd do bits at a time. I felt much better and ended up with really good results."
On Sunday, Chamberlayne Park School closed the festival with its powerful and moving song, Waiting in the Rain, which describes carers' experiences of being ignored, left out and misunderstood by teachers and peers.
The CD is about what it's like to be a young carer, explains Ben. "We shared ideas through drama and role-play and the lyrics became our shared song," he says. "It's been shown to the students and the teachers and it's going to be used with other schools. Lots of teachers have told us they think it's really good. It's making a difference to people's understanding. A lot of the young people think what we do is amazing."
The young carers have renamed Chamberlayne Park School "Caring People Succeed". Many more schools need to follow their example.
www.youngcarersfestival.co.uk
Bill Badham is development officer at The National Youth Agency.
