Get involved as Carers Week 2025 focusses on ‘Caring about Equality’
Helen Walker, Chief Executive, Carers UK
| TSB
Across the UK, millions of people provide unpaid care for family and friends. Yet many face significant inequalities as a result, including in their working lives.
Carers Week is the annual campaign to raise awareness of unpaid carers. Sponsored by TSB, this year the campaign will run from 9-15th June and is brought to life by thousands of individuals and organisations working to shine a spotlight on caring throughout the week.
5.8 million people care for an ill, disabled or older family member or friend in the UK1 and caring is something that almost all of us will do at some point during our lives. Carers hold families together and help loved ones to get the most out of life. The care they provide is also crucial to our health and social care systems, but carers often face significant inequalities due to the care they provide, including in their working lives.
That’s why, this year, Carers Week will be focused on ‘Caring about Equality’, highlighting the many inequalities unpaid carers face, including a greater risk of poverty, social isolation, and poor mental and physical health.
Combining care with paid employment can be particularly challenging. 2.3 million employees have unpaid caring responsibilities but many struggle to stay in the workplace due to the demands of the role.
Every day, around 600 carers make the difficult decision to leave work entirely, with many more in part-time or insecure roles. This can be extremely challenging for individuals but also has a huge economic impact. Indeed, each year, the UK economy loses an estimated £37bn due to unpaid carers being unable to work.
While the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, introduced last April, was a step in the right direction giving working carers unpaid leave to care if they needed it, we need to go further. A first step would be giving working carers a statutory right to paid carer’s leave through the passage of the Employment Rights Bill.
Many carer-friendly employers, including TSB, already provide employees with access to paid carer’s leave. TSB launched their Carers Policy in 2020, offering their workforce who have declared caring responsibilities up to 70 hours paid carer’s leave on a rolling 12-month period. Almost eight per cent of TSB staff have taken advantage of this, with many advocating the policy – described by one carer as a ‘fourth emergency service’ – allowing them to continue with a rewarding career at TSB alongside their caring responsibilities.
We’re keen to see more good employer practice develop, with more organisations adopting carer-friendly practices and introducing paid carer’s leave policies.
Carers Week offers everyone the opportunity to support unpaid carers. Whether this is the first time you have been involved or if you show your support every year, we need your help in and out of Parliament to improve awareness of the invaluable work unpaid carers do, the help that is available and how they must be better supported in every area of their lives.
You can play a role in your community by:
- Contacting your local carers group or organisation and find out what they have planned.
- Sharing Carers UK’s advice and information with carers in your constituency.
- Helping to build more carer-friendly communities by encouraging organisations and services (including employers, GP surgeries, pharmacies, schools, colleges and universities) to help identify and support unpaid carers.
Get involved in Carers Week this June and let’s work together towards a society where unpaid carers are better recognised, valued and supported.
If you have any questions about getting involved with Carers Week as a Parliamentarian, visit www.carersweek.org or contact policy@carersuk.org
- Census 2021
