The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has been calling for people to get back to work. But there’s one group of people he’s overlooked. Many unpaid family carers like me would love to return to full-time employment. But the failure of successive governments to fix our broken social care system has left us to shoulder caring responsibilities that actively stop us working. We’re trapped.
Since I was 14, I’ve been caring for my mum after she lost her sight in one eye. As her health got worse over the years, I took on more responsibilities. It’s an experience many unpaid carers talk about. The amount of time you spend caring increases until, almost without you noticing, it has become the overwhelming role in your life. Eventually, I had no choice but to give up my job as a chartered accountant to become Mum’s full-time unpaid carer, living with her at our south-east London home.
I’m 52 now and Mum is 86. Her health problems include spinal fractures from osteoporosis which have left her with limited mobility. I do pretty much everything for her – from cooking and cleaning to making sure she takes her medication and gets to hospital appointments. There are rewards that come with this; I love the time I spend with Mum. But it brings many challenges, from the toll on mental health and wellbeing to huge financial costs.
For the past few years, we’ve had to get by on Mum’s state pension and disability allowance, helped by the odd bit of freelance work when I can squeeze that in. As bills have rocketed over the past year, I’ve been eating into my savings each month. Because of Mum’s condition, we can’t make cuts by simply turning the heating down. Due to her eyesight, she needs constant light. These financial issues are fast becoming insurmountable and we’re now worried about losing our home. Meanwhile, we’re left with ever-dwindling savings and I’m not paying anything into a pension fund. I can hardly bear to think about the problems this will cause me in future years.
We are by no means a special case, or worse off than many others. According to the 2021 census, there are 5 million unpaid family carers in England and Wales. The true number is probably far higher because so many people just don’t recognise themselves as an unpaid carer. Last year the charity Carers Trust released a survey showing 41% of unpaid carers have had to give up work completely, with another 23% forced to cut back on their hours because of their caring responsibilities.
Much attention has been rightly paid to the problems facing social care. But what largely goes unreported are the unpaid carers who are picking up the slack. Without us the system would collapse. Take away the care millions of us provide every single day and the country would need thousands more hospital beds and social care packages.
So it’s galling to hear Jeremy Hunt talk about getting people back to work while doing nothing to address this issue. Carers UK and Age UK estimate that unpaid carers withdrawing from the labour market is costing society £1.3bn annually. There are millions of us who could be contributing to the workforce each year but can’t because we’re caring for free. That’s yet another reason to finally try to fix the social care system, but Hunt’s promised social care strategy has been shelved. There aren’t enough care packages available, and care homes remain horrendously expensive.
Meanwhile, carer’s allowance, the benefit that many unpaid carers rely on, remains the lowest benefit of its kind. Incredibly, it seems designed to stop people working. To pick up your weekly sum of £76.75 you have to care for a minimum of 35 hours a week and can only be earning a maximum of £139 a week after tax. And the maze of eligibility criteria makes your head spin. If the person you care for is awarded the severe disability premium, as in my case, they lose it if someone gets carer’s allowance for looking after them. If your state pension is greater than carer’s allowance, you’re also not eligible, which discriminates against older carers.
I’m told this week is Carers Week, which is supposed to draw attention to the things millions like me do every single day. With a general election next year, now is the time to insist the government stops the discrimination, marginalisation and penalisation of unpaid carers. My hope is that, by the time Carers Week rolls around next year, those in power will have worked out people like me should be supported to get back into work. Instead, with no end to the social care crisis in sight, I fear our ranks will have only grown.
Denise Wilkins is an unpaid carer and former chartered accountant