Carers UK is at the forefront of the carers’ movement, bringing carers together to have a voice and deliver lasting change. We’ll keep campaigning until we can all look after loved ones without putting our own lives on hold. Together we can make life better for carers.
We’ve been campaigning with carers for over 50 years, transforming understanding and winning critical developments in carers’ rights. In these challenging times, our work has never been more important as we seek to protect these rights, while pressing ahead to break new ground.
Here, we want to share some of the main successes we’ve achieved, both over the years and in recent months. But our current campaigns also highlight where carers' rights and support are still falling short.
Recent successes
Throughout 2021 and early 2022, we ran a successful campaign to secure rights for carers to be consulted about the person they care for, before they are discharged from hospital in England. Millions of carers experience hospital discharge for the person they care for each year, and we know this can often be an extremely difficult time for carers – and a situation where many take on new caring responsibilities for the first time.
That is why it was so important to retain these rights in legislation. The Bill as originally published would have removed these vitally important rights from carers. You can find out more about our campaign here. We are now working with others to ensure that these rights are put into practice.
We played an instrumental role in ensuring that unpaid carers were one of the groups that were prioritised for the COVID-19 vaccination in 2020, 2021 and 2022 – three times we had to fight to ensure that carers were included, having been left out of initial advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.
We also worked closely with the Department for Health and Social Care and NHS England to ensure that as many carers as possible were called forward for their vaccination, as well as key bodies in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. As a result, millions of carers across the UK were prioritised.
We worked hard to ensure that unpaid carers were clearly included in the Government’s plans for reform of the adult social care system in England. In the past, the needs and experiences of unpaid carers were all too often not considered by Government when they were making plans for large scale reforms. That’s why we were pleased to see carers clearly included throughout the Government’s White Paper, ‘People at the Heart of Care’, with a specific chapter dedicated to the needs of carers.
While we do not think the plans go anywhere near far enough to ensure that carers and those they care for to get the support they need, this was a positive step in the right direction. We will continue to call for fundamental reform of the social care system in England, one which places carers at its heart with sustainable and effective levels of funding to ensure everyone can access the high quality support they need.
We have secured additional payments in Scotland, called the Carer Supplement, which was doubled during the pandemic, and an additional payment in Wales. However, some parts of the UK, such as England and Northern Ireland did not receive additional payments and this continues to be a core part of our campaigns about increasing financial support to carers. Working with other charities during the pandemic, we helped to secure additional payments for people in receipt of Universal Credit.
We have secured rises every few years to the earnings limit on Carer’s Allowance, without which, carers would have been much worse off. However, improving this limit remains a core goal so that carers don’t lose out as wages rise.
Past successes
- Carers UK was the driving force behind an historic and unprecedented trio of Private Members Bills in the UK Parliament. Out of this work came new rights for carers to have their needs assessed, enshrining in law the principle that carers should have a life of their own (the Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act 2004) as well as new rights to request flexible working (Work and Families Act 2006).
- We continued to lead work to improve carers’ rights throughout the 2010’s. Our recommendations were adopted in the landmark reform of social care legislation in 2014 and, against Government resistance, we won the battle to ensure parent carers were not left behind.
- We also fought to hold on to carers’ existing rights and won important protections for carers, including ensuring Carer’s Allowance was exempt from the real terms cut imposed on most benefits. In 2013-14, our year-long Caring and Family Finances Inquiry shone a light on carers’ financial hardship, and we led campaigns to protect carers and their families from cuts in disability and housing benefits.
- We played a leading role in the passing of the Care Act 2014, which, for the first time, gave carers a clear right to receive certain services – by far the strongest rights for carers yet secured. You can find out more about the Care Act 2014, and what it means for carers, here.
- In terms of work and equality, we have worked to secure clear deliverable flexible working rights for carers and emergency time off for dependents. One of our members successfully took her case to the European Court to secure a new right of discrimination by association with disability, which led to the provisions in the Equality Act 2010 protecting carers from harassment and discrimination in relation to caring for a person with disability. We continue to campaign to improve carers’ rights at work and in terms of equality.