Who cares for older carers

[rosemary]

When Christine’s father died, her mother, Margaret moved in with her. Forced into early retirement and the role of full-time carer, Christine struggled with finances and she has only recently secured four hours support a week. Older carers like Christine, whose story is featured below, contribute an estimated £15bn in unpaid care a year, yet their stories and support needs remain largely invisible.

see here

[Lola]

I was reading these accounts and I was moved by them all, I agree assistance is their inherent right, because what they believe in and what they do is amazing and inspirational

[charles47]

My mum's been a carer for 50 years. My dad for a fair portion of that until his massive stroke almost 30 years ago.

Her worst fear was that we'd have to go through the same...

[Scally]

Brings home how important it is to de-regulate the informal care economy. If we could just chuck out the petty rules on benefits, income tax, national insurance and reporting small scale earnings and return to common sense and cash in hand on p/t earnings of less than say £200 a week, then it would be possible to employ people quite happily on £6 an hour in most parts of the UK and help lift them from poverty.
Because of the rules on self-employment and benefits, many decent people are barred from working and therefore carers have to turn to agencies charging more than twice that hourly rate. Deregulation/simplification at the bottom end of the employment market is vital to enable socially excluded people to get a toehold intio employment and to restore some social justice to society. We have allowed wishy washy liberals and organised trades unions to dominate this debate for far too long: they are holding millions of people at the bottom of the pile back from improving their situation through small scale social enterprise as paid self-employed care workers on hourly rates.