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Listen nowUnpaid carers driven to breaking point by cost of living crisis
Vital health service is under threat as benefits and allowances fail to keep up
with price rises
Many of the estimated 6.5 million unpaid carers in the UK are being pushed to breaking point by the cost of living crisis, according to charity group Carer's UK.
Unpaid carers provide around £193 billion worth of care every year, but the charity says they are in need of more targeted support - without it, many will be simply unable to cope.
Some 24% are living in relative poverty according to anti-poverty charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. This rises to 44% for working-age adults who provide more than 35 hours a week of care.
Here, we speak to carers who are struggling to make ends meet, and outline the benefits and allowances carers can claim.
Budgets stretched to breaking point
We spoke to a number of unpaid carers about the financial pressures they're currently facing.
Lucy Tate* is 81, self-employed and does her best to juggle part-time work with caring responsibilities. Her 95-year-old husband, John*, suffered a stroke in 2003 and now requires round-the-clock support. (*Not their real names).
‘My earnings dropped off a lot during Covid, and because I was shielding John I had to turn work down,’ says Lucy. ‘I’ve been saving like mad all my life, but my savings weren’t designed to support these kinds of costs. The increasing cost of living has become a time bomb.’
‘I’m astronomically worried,’ says Fiona Jermaine, 37. ‘The gas is barely on and my bills are still £400-odd a month.’
Fiona cares for her mother, Helen, 72, who has motor neurone disease. For them, cutting back on energy use simply isn’t an option. ‘Mum’s medical equipment needs to be on 24/7 and as she can’t move a lot, she gets cold easily,' says Fiona.
Even with the government’s decision to limit energy prices until April 2023, and its £400 Energy Bill Support Scheme, bills are still around 64% higher than last winter.
Carers UK has warned that without urgent action from the government many more carers will be pushed into poverty, with its research showing that 45% are unable to afford their monthly expenses - and that's before winter hits.
Benefits fail to keep up with living costs
The main benefit available to this group is Carer’s Allowance, and this year’s 3.1% uplift from £67.60 per week to £69.70 has badly lagged behind rising prices.
‘My Carer’s Allowance works out to about 40p an hour. If you add Universal Credit it’s about 70p an hour [for the hours she spends caring]. That’s nowhere near minimum wage,’ says Fiona.
To qualify for Carer's Allowance, claimants can’t have income from any source of more than £132 per week after tax; and also can’t receive a full state pension.
There’s no taper on the earnings cut off, meaning carers are incentivised to keep any income from work below this ‘cliff edge’ point. Plus, any Universal Credit being claimed is reduced pound for pound by any Carer’s Allowance being received, although carers can get extra money through the Universal Credit Carer’s Element.
Proving that they provide the minimum required 35 hours a week of care was also an issue for many of the carers we spoke with.
Jayne Simpson, 55, helps care for her adult daughter who has autism and requires a 24-hour package of care in supported accommodation.
‘It’s a difficult one for us now because our daughter officially gets a 24-hour-a-day package of care – although I’m still putting a lot of hours in myself,' says Jayne. 'It’s much harder to prove how many hours you’re putting in. I just haven’t got the time to take up that battle.'
- Find out more: what is Universal Credit?
Financial support for carers
We've outlined the various forms of financial support for carers below - click on each element to see how much you could get, and any eligibility criteria.
Carers missing out on full-time salaries
Covid had a substantial negative impact on the employment prospects of carers, with 23% leaving their job or forced to reduce their hours, according to Carers UK research in 2021.
By law, informal carers have the right to request flexible working, and the right to 'reasonable time off' to care for an ill dependant. But a survey by the charity found that 62% of working carers stated they had given up work opportunities due to their care commitments.
Others have spoken of difficulties coming to an agreement, with employers over what constitutes ‘reasonable time off’.
‘If my mother was sick and I couldn’t get out of work, I had to either use my holiday allowance or they would mark it down that I was sick,’ says Fiona, who left her job during the pandemic. ‘I would try to explain that the law entitles me to reasonable time off, but what counts as reasonable?’
The graph below shows the employment status split of adult informal carers as of 2020-21, using data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Professional carers also struggling
Most informal carers are desperate for any kind of practical support, and this often comes from professional carers. But chronic staff shortages and low pay has pushed this sector into its own crisis.
There are 165,000 empty care posts according to Skills for Care, the strategic planning body for social care in the UK. And average hourly pay is just £9.01 – less than the National Living Wage (£9.50).
Staff turnover is high, and research from the health charity The King’s Fund points out that most major supermarkets pay higher minimum wages than the social care sector.
‘We often have difficulty staffing our daughter’s 24-hour rota,’ says Jayne. ‘There are huge problems with recruitment and retention in social care. There have been some really good people recruited to support her, but they don’t stay because the pay is so dreadful and there’s no career progression.’
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Sign up nowAn urgent call for support
When these issues were put to the government, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) told us that it ‘recognises and values the vital contribution made by carers every day to support family and friends’.
It added that 60% of working-age people on Carer’s Allowance will receive increased cost of living payments – £650 for people on means-tested benefits and other targeted payments for families living with a pensioner or a disabled person. This is in addition to the £400 discount for all households.
For Carers UK, however, this doesn’t go nearly far enough, and it has urgently called on the government to provide specific targeted support. It also wants Carer’s Allowance recipients to be included in the extension of the Warm Home Discount Scheme, which provides a £150 discount on energy bills during the winter months.
Finally, it wants the government to address the rate of Carer’s Allowance.
As Emily Holzhausen, director of policy and public affairs at Carers UK, puts it: ‘Without targeted support, too many carers and the people they care for will be pushed further into poverty, impacting their quality of life and that of the people they care for.’
- Find out more: benefits for carers
