When care falls to families: passing the bill to unpaid carers

Fancy being the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the day? Us neither. But follow this perilous flight of fancy for a moment and dare to glance inside the UK economy inbox. Global recession forecast. Gulp. Demise of US support for NATO demands immediate defence uplift. Sheesh. And what was that Sir Keir said earlier this year about the cost-of-living being his government’s number one priority… But wait – what about building all those new houses?

It’s easy – and understandable – to see why another call for spending on social care will fall on deaf(ened) ears.

But the six million people across the UK who care for a relative or friend too unwell to manage alone provide support worth around £184 billion a year if replaced with paid care. That is roughly comparable to the UK NHS budget.

They are not superheroes, nor are they an ‘invisible army’ or a ‘shadow workforce’ of grateful volunteers – they are you and I, parents, children, spouses, friends, siblings, neighbours. They do it out of love, duty and expertise, and without them what we call ‘care’ cannot function. Yet the care they give is  poorly recognised by health and statutory bodies, little protected from hardship, and often without sufficient support to protect the wellbeing and dignity of the people who give care themselves.

Our new Wise in 5 briefing, published by PolicyWISE, compares how the five jurisdictions of the UK and Ireland recognise and support unpaid carers. The picture is one of profound inconsistency.

Scotland pays a Carer Supplement of £609 a year on top of the base payment and is developing a Minimum Income Guarantee agenda that prioritises unpaid carers. The Republic of Ireland offers up to €270 a week, a €2,000 annual Carer's Support Grant and up to two years of unpaid care leave. In England, carers receive £86.45 a week, are barred from full-time study, and as of February last year, around 144,000 had outstanding overpayment debt caused by the system’s own design flaws. Respite provision in England fell by 42 per cent between 2015/16 and 2020/21. Wales has just issued a Draft National Strategy for Unpaid Carers for consultation. The level of support a carer receives depends less on need than on which side of a border they live.

Income insecurity for carers is a political choice, not a natural consequence of care. That’s the argument, in a nutshell – and it’s something we can all do something about. Most of us will give care at some point, receive it, or watch someone we love do both. What carers want is straightforward: recognition, protection from hardship, confidence that stepping back will not mean abandoning the person they look after.

With the Casey Commission into adult social care due its final report in 2028, policymakers across the nations have a narrow window to agree common minimum standards, guarantee income protection, and fund respite as a statutory right. The briefing sets out five policy recommendations for how to get there.

by Dan Taylor, Senior Lecturer In Social And Political Thought at The Open University