About the State of Caring survey
The State of Caring survey is the UK’s most comprehensive regular research into the lives and experiences of unpaid carers.
State of Caring survey 2025
Thank you to everyone who filled in the State of Caring survey 2025, your responses help us paint a picture of caring in Scotland and highlight the top issues that carers are facing today.
Half of Scotland’s unpaid carers cutting back on food and heating amidst deteriorating health.
The new “State of Caring: The Cost of Caring in Scotland 2025”, launched on Carers Rights Day (20 November) shows a deteriorating picture for Scotland’s 627,000 unpaid carers, with significant costs to their financial security, health, employment and opportunities.
- 48% have cut back on essentials like food and heating because of their caring role.
- 35% have taken out loans, used credit cards, or overdrafts to make ends meet.
- 42% are struggling to afford the costs of social care support, and 32% reporting that the cost of care had increased.
- 40% have reduced their working hours or given up paid employment.
- 15% have had been unable to afford to go to university or college, or other education.
- 30% said their physical health and 39% their mental health is poor because of their caring role.
The research shows an alarming rise in the number of unpaid carers forced to cut back on heating their homes and feeding themselves and of the financial pressures on carers intensifying.
One in five (20%) unpaid carers responding to this year’s survey said they are struggling to make ends meet, and this financial burden grows for those receiving social security benefits, with 38% of those receiving Carer Support Payment and 44% of carers living on means tested benefits such as Universal Credit, struggling to make ends meet.