Copy of Joseph Rowntree Foundation warns of coming unpaid care crisis

Joseph Rowntree Foundation warns of coming unpaid care crisis

By: Kerry Lorimer 28 Aug 24

Cross-government action is needed to deal with a crisis in care that will see almost one million more people take on caring responsibilities over the next 10 years, a leading think-tank has said.

Analysis from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that by 2035 there will be an extra 400,000 people in the UK caring for the elderly, sick and disabled for 10 or more hours a week, up 11.3% on current figures. Of those new carers, 130,000 will be of working age, it predicted.

If those caring for less than 10 hours a week are included, the number of additional carers will rise to 990,000, a 10.6% increase compared to now.

Rates of very high intensity care – 35 or more hours a week – are also rising, driven by more prevalent chronic and degenerative conditions and greater numbers of people caring for working-age disabled people requiring long-term care.

The foundation said the current system was not designed to cope with increasingly complex care demands, which relied on the availability and affordability of paid care, the benefit system, job design and social networks.

“Without a change in direction, rising care needs risk overwhelming our outdated and fragmented systems,” it said.

It called for the creation of a cross-governmental Future Care Needs Taskforce, chaired by the Department for Health and Social Care, to prepare for rapidly growing demand for paid and unpaid care. The group would plan for the expansion of paid care services but also how to unlock the caring capacity of family and social networks through paid leave, more generous carer benefits and community support, it said.

Representatives from the Department for Work and Pensions, Department for Business and Trade, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Education would also sit on the taskforce.

Bringing ministers together is essential to overcome the “different departmental agendas” inherent in the current system under which paid adult social care was planned separately from financial support for unpaid carers. The taskforce would explicitly link support for informal carers to the development of the National Care Service, given the central role unpaid care would play in meeting future care needs, the foundation said.

Abby Jitendra, principal policy adviser for care, family and relationships, said that the UK faced a crisis in care over the next ten years. “Our already strained paid care system is unfit to meet growing and changing care needs,” she said. “On top of that, a million more of us will be caring despite inadequate support which leaves unpaid carers at a higher risk of poverty."

“Government should set up a Future Care Needs taskforce to plan cross-governmental action to meet the rising tide of care needs, improving paid care services while making it easier for people to care themselves through benefits support and paid leave.

“This will give people real choice, as care needs grow, over how to meet theirs or their loved one's care needs.”