What does it mean to be an unpaid carer?

What are the challenges of juggling work whilst also caring?

Through a personal story, this comic reveals the difference that adjustments in the workplace make to carers, helping them to remain in employment whilst also improving their finances, health and wellbeing.

Illustration by Savannah Storm
Editing and Production by Gabi Putnoki

This comic was created and funded by the Centre for Care using research from the Centre for Care and the Sustainable Care Programme.

What is an unpaid carer?

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) definition:

“An unpaid carer may look after, give help or support to anyone who has long-term physical or mental ill-health conditions, illness or problems related to old age. This does not include any activities as part of paid employment. This help can be within or outside of the carer’s household.”

Stats, facts, definitions:

• The value of unpaid care in the UK is £184 billion – equal to the annual NHS budget for all four nations (Petrillo et al., 2024)
• The population providing care is constantly changing with thousands of people moving in and out of care every day: 12,000 people in the UK become carers every day, of whom 5,300 are in employment (Petrillo et al., 2022)
• Over their lifetimes, women have a 70% chance of being a carer, compared with 60% for men (Zhang et al.,2019)  
• Carers experience a ‘triple penalty’ in terms of the impact of unpaid care on their finances, relationships and health. 
• Between 2010 and 2020, more than 1.9 million people in paid employment became unpaid carers every year (Petrillo et al., 2022)
• Many unpaid carers leave employment earlier than the general population: every day, 600 people give up paid work to care.
• Periods of caring can have longer term financial consequences than reduced income and direct costs – such as reducing longer term savings, investments, saving for retirement. This means that periods spent caring can have financial impacts much further into the future once the caring period has finished. (Watkins & Overton, 2024; Overton & Watkins (in review).

Who can be cared for?

• Older adults, parents
• People with long-term health conditions
• People with disabilities
• People with mental health needs
• People with learning difficulties/neurodivergence
• Children with additional needs
• People in recovery

The different forms unpaid care takes

🛍️ Practical Daily Support

• Getting shopping, Preparing food & Feeding someone
• Personal care, bathing, or showering and dressing someone
• Cleaning, Gardening or outdoor tasks
• Walking the dog & Taking pets to the vet
• Helping with exercise or physical activity
• Travelling with them on public transport (e.g. buses)

🧠 Medical & Health-Related Support

• Getting & administering medication
• Accompanying someone to a medical appointment and advocating for them at doctors, dentists etc
• Support during the night (e.g. night waking, supervision)
• Doing training to learn how to offer appropriate support while preserving dignity

---

💬 Emotional & Social Support

• Offering emotional support and being a “safe” person
• Regular phone calls/check-ins
• Spending time chatting to combat loneliness
• Encouraging and supporting creative activities, hobbies, or attending clubs
• Taking them to social events (especially if they have mobility issues or dementia)

---

🗂️ Advocacy & Admin

• Paying bills (at the post office or online)
• Helping manage finances or household bills
• Being contactable 24/7 in case of emergencies or ongoing care
• Advocating on their behalf with organisations (e.g. school, DWP, council, utility companies)
• Managing or supporting complex admin for benefits (Universal Credit, PIP, DLA, etc.)

RECOMMENDATIONS 

Recommendations for employers:

1. Introduce Paid Carer’s Leave: Build on the Carer’s Leave Act 2023 by ensuring carers you employ have access to paid leave, not just statutory unpaid, to better balance work and care responsibilities.
2. Strengthen and Extend Flexible Working Arrangements: Offer flexible working arrangements (e.g. start/finish times, home working) as standard, recognising the varied and unpredictable nature of caring roles.
3. Enhance Workplace Awareness and Recognition of Working Carers:  Foster a culture of carer-friendly workplaces by formally recognising carers, publicising support options, and reducing stigma through awareness campaigns.
4. Train Managers and Staff on Caring Responsibilities:  Provide training for line managers and awareness-raising across all levels, so that staff understand the pressures faced by carers and the importance of empathy, and can offer appropriate support.
5. Develop Clear, Accessible Workplace Policies: Ensure carers know their rights and entitlements by providing easily accessible, clearly communicated policies and guidance.
6. Design workplace support with working carers: Develop workplace support measures in consultation with working carers, ensuring policies reflect real needs across diverse circumstances, including gender and job status.
7. Improve Access to Mental and Physical Health Support for Carers: Address the wellbeing of carers, including their own medical needs, through counselling, flexible leave for appointments, and inclusion in health support programmes.

Recommendations for policymakers:

1. Make Carers’ Leave a Paid Entitlement:  Enhance the Carer’s Leave Act 2023 by introducing the requirement that Carers’ Leave is paid. 
2. Raise Public and Employer-Awareness and Recognition of Working Carers: To help people identify as carers and to create public and employer awareness of the value of unpaid care to the UK to reduce stigma and discrimination.
3. Improve Support for Carers: Invest in accessible and appropriate care services (including respite and short breaks) is essential to support unpaid carers’ wellbeing. A clear plan is needed for social care reform to provide appropriate and affordable care and improve carers’ quality of life.
4. Reform Financial and Pension Support for Carers:  review the earnings threshold of  Carer’s Allowance so that carers are able to undertake more paid work if they are able to and without the risk of overpayments; ensure pension protections (e.g. raising awareness of Carer’s Credit), and reform  welfare systems so that it recognises the value of caring, allows carers to work or study if they can,  and improves carers’ financial wellbeing .
5. Co-produce Policy with Carers: Develop support measures in consultation with carers, ensuring policies reflect real needs across diverse circumstances, including gender and job status.
6. Specialist training for DWP to Understand Caring: DWP staff need better training, policies and processes in place to understand the needs of carers and the people they support ; and introduce a statutory duty to safeguard the wellbeing of vulnerable claimants.
7. Support for Carers Who Need to Take a Longer-Term Break from Employment: Explore policy options to provide employees with the right to take a longer period of leave so carers do not fall out of the labour market when they have particularly complex and intense periods of unpaid care, and provide supported pathways back into work.
8. Protect Carers from Workplace Discrimination: Making caring a protected characteristic by updating the Equality Act 2010 to strengthen carers’ rights to protection from discrimination and harassment in the workplace.

About the comic design team

Savannah Storm is an illustrator and comic artist, based in North Yorkshire. She specialises in creating informative and fun illustrations, often for non-fiction books and heritage projects. She also enjoys making zines and drawing in her sketchbook. www.savannah-storm.com

Gabi Putnoki is a comics producer, writer and editor, turning research into comics to reach wider audiences and to amplify impact. She also runs the unique comics reading event, the Graphic Novel Reading Room, sharing the joy of comics with more people in more places. www.linkedin.com/company/gabi-putnoki-comics-production