By: Dr Shannon Schedlich, Chief Executive of Siblings Australia
Picture this: you’re a teenager. Your brother has a significant intellectual disability. With support, he’s attending the same school as you. While that support includes a worker who is meant to engage with him at recess and lunch. Instead, the worker interrupts you each break-time and brings your brother to you to support, which means you spend every single break supporting your brother rather than engaging with your peers.
Or perhaps consider this scenario: you’re at primary school. Your brother is non-verbal. He’s being bullied in the schoolyard. You’re not even 10, but you know the teachers are pretty much unaware of or ignoring what is going on. You take it upon yourself to approach the bullies and give them the telling off that the adults aren’t.
Or perhaps: you’re in trouble for not getting your homework done. It’s an assignment that requires parental involvement. Whilst your parents are at home each evening after work, they are consumed with taking your sister to therapy and helping her regulate. By the time dinner is done, everyone in the house is exhausted because the household woke when your sister did, at 4 am – a regular occurrence.
In my time as Chief Executive of Siblings Australia, these are not fictional scenarios of what it might be like to grow up with a brother or a sister with a disability or a chronic health condition. They reflect the very real experiences shared with us, and they speak to the significant impact that being a sibling can have on a child’s education. These examples are only a very small snapshot of the many, many stories we hear time and time again.
The other constant? Educators and those who work in education policy assure us that, while they understand that these stories do happen in some situations, it’s never in their system, or their school, or on their watch.
And yet the stories keep coming. The brothers and sisters of people with disabilities and chronic illnesses are pulled out of class to support their siblings when the teachers don’t know how to respond, thinking a young child is better equipped to support, just because it’s their ‘norm’. These sibling children are dealing with emotional loads the adults around can’t fathom while maintaining a façade of being okay because they are so used to downplaying their own needs, because home is complicated, and they don’t want to be a “burden”. They are missing out on extra-curricular opportunities because their carers are too busy juggling an over-full load.
Siblings Australia is the only national organisation dedicated to supporting the brothers and sisters of people with disabilities and chronic illnesses.
For more than 25 years, Siblings Australia has worked across policy, practice, research and service delivery to ensure siblings are seen, supported and recognised as a critical part of Australia’s care and support ecosystem.
In recognition of the impact we know that being a sibling has on a child’s education, Siblings Australia has made formal submissions to education reviews and inquiries, highlighting the hidden load carried by sibling students. We have worked alongside the South Australian Department for Education to develop practical guidance for school staff to better understand and support siblings within their classrooms. And we have partnered with organisations nationally to embed sibling-inclusive approaches into their own education guidelines and child-safe frameworks.
This work is not about creating a new label or adding another compliance requirement. It is about awareness. It is about ensuring educators have the language, confidence and practical tools to recognise when a child’s behaviour, disengagement or quiet competence might be shaped by complex dynamics at home. It is about reducing the likelihood that children are informally relied upon to bridge gaps in support systems that were never meant to be their burden to carry.
Next month is Siblings Day (Friday, April 10). It is a day to celebrate all sibling relationships, not just those that fall within the Siblings Australia remit. For our organisation, it is also a time to reflect on the siblings whose needs are sometimes invisible in plain sight.
For the education and care sector, Siblings Day offers an invitation to pause and consider the children in your classrooms whose family circumstances may not be obvious, but whose daily experience is shaped by them nonetheless.
In the coming years, we will all be part of the rollout of Thriving Kids, however that ultimately takes shape. If we are serious about children thriving, we must remember that thriving children are part of thriving families. And the longest relationship most people will ever have is with their brothers or sisters.
To ensure the success of Thriving Kids, it will not be enough to focus solely on the child identified as having additional needs. We must avoid tunnel vision. When siblings are recognised, supported and understood – in the classroom and elsewhere – the ripple effects extend well beyond the school gate.
