Offering carers unpaid time off isn’t just unhelpful – it’s an insult

The Carer’s Leave Act will do nothing to help people who are already struggling to make ends meet while looking after their loved ones, writes Jane Dalton, who acts as a carer for her elderly father. The government must do significantly more to support those who already do so much while being given so little in return

Carers already save the state millions of pounds in what would otherwise be massive social support costs (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Up to 35,000 people could face prosecution, fines and crippling debts because they claimed carer’s allowance – mostly inadvertently – when their part-time wages edged above the maximum threshold. In most cases, the reason they were eligible for the benefit was that caring – their very reason for claiming – precludes them from working full-time.

That they will be punished is a scandal, made all the more egregious by the fact that so many would love to be able to work full-time and not take cash from the state. Moreover, the five million of us in the UK who provide such care at home save the state £162bn a year in what would otherwise be massive social support costs, according to Carers UK and the University of Sheffield.

This is just the latest development in the decades of inequity to which unpaid carers in the UK have been subjected.

This month, a new law takes effect giving one week off work each year to carers who juggle our responsibilities with employment. The legislation was hailed as a great step forward that would give a much-needed boost to our work-life balance.

But crucially, the week is unpaid, which makes it about as much help as the proverbial chocolate fireguard.

Behind closed doors, caregivers are sacrificing full-time jobs and career prospects – and with it higher pay – to look after vulnerable family members.

According to the latest report by charity Carers UK, more than one in five have had to cut back their work hours, while nearly half of those who had stopped work or reduced their hours had suffered a drop in income of at least £1,000 a month.

For anyone already struggling to make ends meet, giving up any earnings is the last thing they need. They simply can’t afford to lose any more wages.

And caring itself comes with extra costs. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 44 per cent of working-age adults who are caring are in poverty. In 2022, a report by Carers UK found a quarter of carers were cutting back on essentials such as food and heating.

Thousands more of us don’t qualify for carer’s allowance because our earnings put us above the threshold to claim, while still being less than full-time salaries.

So when MPs hail the new law as “progress”, it smacks of “let them eat cake” – demonstrating a sorry absence of understanding. While the intention behind the new legislation may be laudable, it is only a step in the journey towards correcting a long-standing imbalance.

Contrast it with laws on parental leave. Reducing the number of children you have is one of the best ways of reducing your carbon footprint, and in my working life I have not once asked an employer to shoulder the burden of maternity leave. Had I chosen to produce kids, I would have had a year off, on a decent proportion of salary.

But if you’re an unpaid carer, just a single week of paid leave is apparently too much for an employer to spare. (Carers UK said it hoped “forward-looking” employers would give paid leave, but it’s doubtful many will volunteer to do so.)

I am one of those entitled to an unpaid week off. However, I won’t be taking it because I don’t want to lose a week’s pay.

My dad, 92, is registered blind and, most mornings before I begin work, I’m driving him to appointments, liaising with health services, paying bills online for him, setting up grocery deliveries, reading letters, instructions and leaflets for him, checking his emails and texts, or fixing his faulty rollator, Alexa or Talking Books app. How many of these tasks do new parents have to do for a baby? Not so many, especially as babies tend to live with their parents and have yet to rely on technology.

The idea of an extra week off is, in theory, a welcome recognition that swathes of my time away from work is not my own. While one week hardly compensates, it still has the potential to help those of us who juggle a multitude of obligations while still trying to lead our own lives.

And guess what? It will be women particularly who will feel patronised by the Carer’s Leave Act, since we are more likely to become carers and put in more unpaid hours than men, figures show. To us, the new law feels little more than an empty gesture.

Nor does the new law do anything to tackle the real problems that unpaid carers face of stress and finite resources of time and money. It also fails to address the fact that increasing numbers of family members are forced into unpaid care as the number of elderly rises and social services have been increasingly squeezed dry by Tory cuts.

Those of us who struggle to fit everything into 24 hours a day already do so much unpaid work – and now we’re expected to celebrate being unpaid yet again. It is, to put it bluntly, an insult.