John Hancox protests against government cuts to carers' services, Dublin. Photo: Julien Behal / PA Archive/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.The UK will soon have 7 million carers, representing some 12% its people, who provide the vast majority of the care needed by sick and disabled people outside hospital. In England, real-terms spending on social care has fallen by £770 million since 2010, and local authority-arranged home care is in decline: between 2011 and 2014 the number of home care clients fell by over 13 per cent. Carers’ growing and unpaid contributions to our system of care and support are now worth £132 billion a year, almost double their value in 2001. That’s equal to the cost of the NHS and four times what local authorities spend on social care.
An influential history of activism and reform
Many carers, far from feeling supported as they give help to loved ones in need, face a triple penalty: deterioration in their own health, financial strain, and feelings of isolation, loneliness and a feeling of being cut off from the daily life others take for granted. The 2016 State of Caring report details current pressures on carers; yet the latest data shows that only 334,000 carers in England (6 per cent of all carers) receive local authority support.
In seeking to address carers’ situation, successive UK governments have, since 1999, set out their aims, commitments and policy intentions in national carers’ strategies. One such strategy is expected from the present government by the end of 2016. Now emulated in several other countries (including Australia, Canada and New Zealand), this approach first arose in response to the campaigns and lobbying of UK carers’ organisations. Indeed, the emergence of public policy support for carers in the UK, predating the first national carers’ strategy by over 30 years, itself arose from the mobilisation of carers (albeit not yet named as such) back in the 1960s.
