What kinds of support enable carers to continue caring?
Background
We are interested in developing the research evidence around unpaid care givers (including young carers) and for those who receive unpaid care. The impacts of unpaid care are known to be significant, ranging from physical health and emotional wellbeing, to impacts on finances and economic activity. It is vital to understand these impacts, to feed into policy decisions and target additional support where it is most needed.
Unpaid carers provide a significant amount of support that is not currently accounted for within the social care workforce more generally. As such, quantifying the amount of people providing care, and the amount of care they provide, is vital to enable efficient and accurate workforce planning and projections moving forward.
Unpaid carers provide support which also impacts on the amount and type of formal care someone receives; therefore, unpaid care is an important factor across many of the themes found in this ARI.
There are various datasets covering the provision of care (Scottish Health Survey (SHeS)) and experiences of carers (Health and Care Experience Survey (HACE)), Carers Census), however the data landscape is not consistent and some data sources represent specific sub-groups of carers, and as such, it can be difficult to draw conclusions based on these sources on the entire caring population.
Next steps
Get in touch with [email protected]
Source
This question was published as part of the set of ARIs in this document:
Social Care Analytical Unit Areas of Research Interest 2026 2029 published 25 March 2026
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Related UKRI funded projects
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Using the Earnings and Employees Study (2011) to analyse the association between unpaid caring and employment and earnings in NI.
Currently it is estimated that one-in-five adults in Northern Ireland (NI) have caring responsibilities. A total of 214,000 (12%) people were providing some form of unpaid care on Census Day 2011 in NI, compared with 185...
Funded by: ESRC
Lead research organisation: University of Ulster
Why might this be relevant?
This project provides a comprehensive analysis of unpaid caring in Northern Ireland and its relationship to employment and income, addressing the impacts and benefits associated with caring.
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Building the care skill set of unpaid carers
In the United Kingdom, there are currently around 13.6 million unpaid family carers looking after older, ill and/or disabled adults. This number increases by 6000 people daily and over 2 million people yearly. People a...
Funded by: ISCF
Lead research organisation: King's College London
Why might this be relevant?
This project focuses on building the care skill set of unpaid carers, which partially addresses the question by providing guidance on tackling everyday care tasks.
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Extending our understanding of informal care provision in mid-life in the UK by linking qualitative and quantitative data in the NCDS
The provision of informal care in mid-life is an issue of critical policy importance in the context of an ageing population. Much of the previous literature in this area has mapped the patterns of informal care provision...
Funded by: ESRC
Lead research organisation: University of Southampton
Why might this be relevant?
This project extends the understanding of informal care provision in mid-life in the UK, which partially addresses the question by exploring the motivations and impact of caring in mid-life.