THE Archbishop of Canterbury has called for a society-wide shift in recognition and support for unpaid carers.
The Archbishop was responding on Monday, the primary day of this 12 months’s Carers Week campaign, to the report No Choice but to Care, published by the organisers of the week. Its recommendations include public investment in a national carers’ strategy for England and Wales.
“By attending to the needs of their relatives, neighbours or friends, unpaid carers point us towards the good aspiration of a society marked by service as love-in-action,” the Archbishop said on social media. “I do know from my very own experience of life and ministry that caring is each hard and life-giving. Children and young persons are also often carers and want special support.
“When unpaid carers speak concerning the physical, mental and economic circumstances they face, we must do greater than listen; we must act. We must honour their service with a society-wide shift in how we have fun and support unpaid carers, which requires laws from Government, flexibility from employers, and a renewed commitment from all of us as actively engaged residents in our communities.”
The report estimates that 1.5 million people in England and Wales now provide unpaid look after greater than 50 hours each week, collectively contributing £162 billion to the economy every 12 months.
Carers Week is organised by Carers UK with Age UK, the Carers Trust, The Lewy Body Society, The ME Association, the Motor Neurone Disease Association, Oxfam GB, and Rethink Mental Illness.
Providing unpaid care could be rewarding, the report says, but also can have significant negative impacts on carers’ lives. The low level of social-security advantages, inadequate structures to assist carers to sustain paid work, and a scarcity of time to take care of their very own physical and mental health leave them less resilient on all fronts, with fewer opportunities to pursue a profession. And younger unpaid carers often struggle to mix caring responsibilities with the demands of their education.
The report calls for significant motion from the following UK and devolved governments to place in place a comprehensive package of support for unpaid carers.
In a YouGov Omnibus poll of 6472 UK adults, commissioned for Carers Week and conducted in April, about 1100 respondents (17 per cent) said that they were currently providing, or had previously provided, unpaid care within the UK. Of these carers, 62 per cent said that that they had no selection on this, because no other care options were available. Weighed against UK population figures, Carers Week estimates this to be the case for about 10.1 million people. It estimates that there are currently 16.1 million current or former unpaid carers within the UK.
Unpaid care has a big impact on mental and physical well-being, the report says.
Two-thirds of unpaid carers (63 per cent), said that the work had negatively affected their mental health. Of these, one quarter (24 per cent) said that the impact had been “very negative”. More than half (53 per cent) said that their physical health had been affected. Similar numbers reported that unpaid care had affected their job and the flexibility to work (48 per cent), their funds and savings (47 per cent), and their relationships (37 per cent).
Women were significantly more likely than men to be negatively affected in all categories, but particularly in employment. Older middle-aged people (45 to 54) were more prone to report that that they had needed to tackle the unpaid-carer position because no other care options were available (70 per cent), compared with all other age groups. This group was also almost definitely to report a big negative impact on their funds, profession, and pensions.
Carers Week also commissioned a YouGov Political Omnibus poll of 4259 adults, in April, which found that just about three-quarters (73 per cent) wanted the following government to offer more support to unpaid carers. Financial support topped the list of what respondents wanted prioritised.
Chief of the recommendations within the report is the delivery of strategic cross-government motion through a national carers’ strategy, to hitch up work between government departments and to “set a transparent ambition to enhance the lives of unpaid carers of all ages”.
This strategy, it says, “needs to be backed by significant investment, set out future commitments to supporting unpaid carers, discover specific actions that give attention to delivering tangible progress and extra support for carers, including young carers, their families and people they look after”.
Among the case studies within the report is that of a daughter caring for her mother, who found it difficult to seek out an agency to offer the care required. She now uses a team of 5 to 6 private care employees, who are available 3 times a day, at a value of £2500 a month, which is being taken from savings and pensions.
“The buck stops with me on a regular basis,” she says. “Lots of attention goes on the person being cared for (and rightly so) but there have been times once I felt like saying, ‘Hello, I’m drowning.’ Until care is correctly valued, paid, and viewed as something of value, that is the situation we’re going to have.”
The report says that the pressures within the NHS often lead to delays in obtaining healthcare appointments, and that record levels of demand for social-care services mean that many unpaid carers should not getting the support that they need.
A wife caring for her husband with reduced mobility, who has herself suffered a stroke, is quoted as saying: “It’s very hard to be a carer where you actually need to look after yourself. Carers are being treated terribly. We are only left inside our 4 partitions to get on with it. The extra cash we now have to spend to get things done across the house that neither of us can physically do goes through the roof.”
Unpaid carers experience a mean pay penalty of nearly £5000 per 12 months, reaching nearly £8000 per 12 months after six years. Carer’s allowance can also be the bottom good thing about its kind, value just £81.90 per week — a mixture, the report says, which puts unpaid carers at a better risk of poverty. More than one third (34 per cent) were cutting back on essentials corresponding to food and heating in 2023, compared with 13 per cent in 2021.
The estimated a million young carers (under the age of 18) within the UK must also be considered, the report says. Almost 15,000 young carers across England and Wales are caring for greater than 50 hours each week, it estimates. On average, it takes three years for a young carer to be identified for support — and a few are waiting greater than ten years.
The report concludes: “All of us have a 50-50 likelihood of providing unpaid care by the point we’re 50 years old, and a two-in-three likelihood of providing care in our lifetime. However, for a lot of us, the role is unavoidable.”
