For the fifth day of Carers Week, Carers UK Research and Policy Manager Melanie Crew, has written a blog about the importance of intersectionality.
When we’re thinking about the challenges that carers can face, and the disadvantages that carers have compared with people without caring responsibilities, it’s important to remember that everyone’s experience will be slightly different. Although there are common concerns that many carers have, we also need to bear in mind that people’s needs will not always be the same and will sometimes be dependent on other factors.
Intersectionality is a framework that we use to analyse how different factors such as ethnicity, social class, age, gender and sexual orientation can combine, and potentially lead to advantage or disadvantage.
We know that compared to the non-caring population, carers are more likely to be LGBTQ+ 1. They are also more likely to be disabled2. A higher proportion of carers are female, and most cares are aged between 55 and 59 – though it’s the oldest carers (aged 75+) who provide the most hours of care3.
We know that carers can experience significant inequalities in relation to their finances4, health5 and employment6. It is important to recognise that in some cases those inequalities will be perpetuated by carers’ age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability.
At Carers UK, when we ask carers for their views in surveys, like our annual State of Caring survey, we include optional questions at the end where people can share things like their age, gender, faith, ethnicity and sexual orientation. That way we can look at differences in responses by those different factors.
We recently worked in partnership with Carers Trust on a programme called Making Carers Count which focused on carers from underrepresented groups. As part of that we did some research which compared carers’ experiences across different groups. Although many carers were struggling with their finances, ethnic minority carers were more likely to be worried about living costs and managing finances in the future7. This reflects other research which has found that the risk of poverty is higher amongst ethnic minority groups due to factors such as lower employment rates and lower earnings – which can often be due to discrimination8.
Our research also found that LGB+ carers were more likely than heterosexual carers to have concerns around support services not meeting their needs9. This might be because those carers have had negative experiences in the past when accessing services, so are reluctant to seek help. If people have previously faced prejudice or discrimination, it might take a bit longer for them to trust support services and to feel confident about asking for help with caring. Our research with trans carers found that misgendering can make people feel unsupported10.
When we think about how best we can support carers – within Carers UK, within local authority areas, and across NHS and social care services – we need to recognise that carers come from all different backgrounds. Thinking about other factors that might affect someone’s experiences of caring is invaluable in providing a more tailored support service. Many local carers centres have already taken unique approaches to supporting carers from different groups, as highlighted in our best practice guides11. Those organisations have found that asking carers what support they need, and learning more about their individual experiences, is helpful.
This week in Carers Week we are highlighting inequalities that carers can face. One of the things carers continually raise with us is the fact that they feel unrecognised within society. Carers Week is an opportunity to shine a light on caring and raise awareness of what people are doing at home behind closed doors, week after week, to support their family member or friend. No matter what their age, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation is, many of those carers will be experiencing challenges. But some of those carers' experiences will also be impacted by other aspects of their identity and - as we focus on Caring About Equality as our theme for Carers Week – it is really important to think about that intersectionality.
[2] ibid
[4]https://www.carersuk.org/reports/poverty-and-financial-hardship-of-unpaid-carers-in-the-uk/
[6]https://www.carersuk.org/media/no2lwyxl/juggling-work-and-unpaid-care-report-final-web.pdf
[7]https://www.carersuk.org/briefings/the-experiences-of-ethnic-minority-carers-updated-briefing/
[9]https://www.carersuk.org/briefings/the-experiences-of-lgbt-carers-updated-briefing/
[10]https://www.carersuk.org/reports/the-experiences-of-trans-carers/
[11]https://www.carersuk.org/briefings/supporting-black-asian-and-minority-ethnic-carers-a-good-practice-briefing/ ; https://www.carersuk.org/media/3tppsbjc/carers-uk-lgbtq-briefing-2023-web.pdf; and https://www.carersuk.org/media/edndduml/supporting-older-carers-who-are-digitally-excluded-briefing.pdf