The Scottish Budget will be announced on Tuesday 13th January 2026. Unpaid carers and local carer organisations are facing considerable challenges as the pressure on our health and social care system mounts. Cuts to budgets and services mean more unpaid carers are caring for longer and more intensively, often while living in poverty.
The National Carer Organisations urge the Scottish Government to ensure the upcoming budget provides secure and sufficient funding to support both unpaid carers and local carer organisations. This support must include sufficient funding to support the implementation of the right to a break, as well as targeted measures to alleviate poverty and improve health and wellbeing.
Unpaid carers, including young carers, encounter a range of complex and diverse challenges that affect many aspects of their lives. The estimated value of unpaid care in Scotland is £15.9 billion annually. It is imperative that no unpaid carer experiences poverty due to their caring responsibilities. The National Carer Organisations believe that the Scottish Government has a significant opportunity through the Scottish Budget to take decisive action, reinforce its commitment to recognising unpaid carers, and address some of the primary challenges they face.
We are calling on the Scottish Government in its budget to:
- Invest to ensure unpaid carers can have a break from caring, including in developing the Right to a Break from Caring and by increasing voluntary sector short break funding.
- Invest in support for unpaid carers by sustaining local carer organisations, in particular compensating for the extra costs they face from increased employer National Insurance Contributions.
- Invest in reducing poverty amongst unpaid carers by delivering on the commitments to improve Carer Support Payment, and introducing a payment for older adult unpaid carers.
- Invest in reducing poverty amongst unpaid carers and those they care for by making concrete progress in abolishing social care charges.
About the National Care Organisations
The National Carer Organisations in Scotland are Carers Trust Scotland, Carers Scotland, Coalition of Carers in Scotland, MECOPP, Shared Care Scotland and the Scottish Young Carers Services Alliance.
Together we have a shared vision that all Scotland’s unpaid carers will feel valued, included and supported as equal partners in the provision of care. We aim to achieve this through the representation of unpaid carers and giving them a voice at a national level.
We believe we can deliver more for unpaid carers by working together to share our knowledge and experience, and by focusing our collective efforts on achieving improvements in areas of policy and practice that are of greatest concern to unpaid carers.
Contacts
· Paul Traynor, Carers Trust Scotland: ptraynor@carers.org
· Jenni McNab, Shared Care Scotland: jenni.mcnab@sharedcarescotland.com
· Fiona Collie, Carers Scotland: fiona.collie@carerscotland.org
· Joe McCready, Carers Scotland: joe.mccready@carerscotland.org
· James Calder, MECOPP: james@mecopp.org.uk
· Shubhanna Hussain, Coalition of Carers in Scotland: shubhanna@carersnet.org