Courageous Young People

This has been a stunning week for illustrating the best achievements  of  courageous young people. Surrey Young Carers had their annual conference on Tuesday and it was led and delivered by young carers. There are some 1,700 young carers who are "known" in the county, but in reality some 14,000 are thought to have this role.  The conference included some of the stories of their experiences in caring but also some of the consequences of their commitments to caring for parents and siblings – sometimes poorer education and health  problems - often anger (unsurprisingly) and some regrets at not being able to have an ordinary teenage life. However, these were views expressed only when with other young carers; their "public face" was simply "I look after my Mum" as if that was the most normal thing in the world. My input on the day was to facilitate 4 sessions of a workshop discussion about what community initiatives could be taken to support young carers, and there were a great number of ideas.

I can’t let the week pass without mention of the very remarkable young man, the 19 year old Stephen Sutton, who bravely faced his death from incurable bowel cancer and was such an inspiration that he has raised over £4 million for the Teenage Cancer Trust. His memorial service was in Lichfield Cathedral today – a stunning example of how one person of exceptional character and vision can affect us all.

I am off shortly to a meeting with another young man who is severely disabled but set up his own charity and does marvellous work in Surrey and overseas…supported by his devoted mum.

By comparison everything else this week seems trivial- meetings about social enterprise and about possible (unlikely )links into West Sussex.

I am preaching on Sunday…no shortage of material.

          Mike