Unpaid carers provide care for family members, friends, and neighbours in need of support due to long-term illness, disability or older age. In England and Wales, the 2021 Census suggests 5 million people are unpaid carers, providing care valued at £162 billion.
The Centre for Care – in partnership with Carers UK, South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and people with lived experience of care – have co-created the Unpaid Care Dashboard. This interactive tool brings together data from the 2011 and 2021 England and Wales Censuses.
The Unpaid Care Dashboard allows you to explore the Census data and create charts, graphs and reports. You can use it to see which groups of people are providing unpaid care within local authorities, and compare this with other places in England and Wales. You can also see how unpaid carers as a group have changed over time – for example, how much care they provide, whether their health is better or worse, and which types of jobs they do. You can also combine data for multiple local authorities that make up different geographical or administrative areas such as an Integrated Care Board.
The dashboard could be used for many reasons, including improving general understandings of patterns of care, how resources or services might be changed to support local populations, and to support the development of business cases.
The dashboard features nine different pages to help you do this:
- Welcome Page: You enter the dashboard here. You’ll find a description of the project and our contact information for feedback or queries.
- Help Page: This page provides instructions for using the dashboard.
- Quick Stats Page: Here you will find ready-to-use statistics, providing a simplified overview of unpaid caregiving, including demographic and socioeconomic profiles. It also includes the economic value of unpaid caregiving.
- Unpaid Care Page: This page delves deeper into who unpaid carers are, such as their ethnicity, sex, hours of care, and age.
- Demographics Page: On this page there is basic information on health status, disabilities, education levels (highest qualification achieved), and employment characteristics, with a focus on comparing unpaid carers to the general population.
- Health Page: This page provides more detailed information on the health and disability status and it enables comparisons between unpaid carers and the general population.
- Education and Employment Pages: This page provides information to explore differences between unpaid carers and the broader population in terms of educational attainment and employment.
- Compare Page: On this final page you can compare unpaid care characteristics, demographics, health, education, and employment between local authorities and over time.
At the Centre for Care we believe that data should be accessible to all. For this reason, the dashboard also features options for downloading data and visualisations for your own use. In the “Data request” page, you will find options to download PowerPoint presentations or Excel files. These downloads will provide ready-to-use, harmonized data and statistics and visual content to support interpretation and presentation.
Need help? Please check out the Frequently Asked Questions section at the bottom of the page.
Council motions
A council motion is a formal proposal submitted by an elected councillor for an issue to be debated and voted on at a full council meeting. Its primary purpose is to establish new council policies, take a public stance on a community issue, or trigger actionable steps by the local authority.
We have drafted council motions to be used by council members to advocate for a better strategy for supporting unpaid carers in their Local Authority. Download documents for each Local Authority.
Co-design
Co-design brings together people with a variety of different experiences to learn from each other and make things better. Co-design was important to help us make sure the dashboard can be used by people from different backgrounds and with diverse abilities. Co-design workshops were held with project partners, Carers UK and the South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, which brought together service providers, commissioners, carers organisations and people with lived experience of care to co-create the dashboard. This approach ensured the dashboard addressed everyone’s expectations, priorities and goals. The dashboard is also screen reader compatible to increase its accessibility.
The aim of co-creating the dashboard was to develop a freely accessible, inclusive and interactive resource that anyone could use to understand and explore unpaid care using Census data. This includes a wide range of people, including the general public, unpaid carers, and people with responsibilities for social care services.
“It’s not always easy to access data on unpaid caring, and this new dashboard will be invaluable in allowing people to view information about carers in their local area. Whether you want to learn about the economic value of care in your local area, or see what proportion of carers are women, or look at differences between 2011 and 2021 in the proportion of people caring, this dashboard is a fantastic one-stop shop for data on unpaid carers. We are really pleased to have supported the development of this resource at Carers UK and are grateful to all the organisations and carers who offered feedback during the design phase.”
Melanie Crew, Carers UK
“When we’re working to try to make life better for unpaid carers, quantitative data can be a game changer; understanding our populations better, where resources might need to be targeted especially when in short supply, and how we can make the most difference. We have always tried to help local organisations understand unpaid carers’ data better, but this really places so much more control in the hands of local areas to be able to look at issues that matter to them and tailor output. We’ve been very pleased to partner on this project. Carers UK is really excited to see how this helps to shape knowledge, practice, and ultimately better outcomes for unpaid carers and the people they support.”
Emily Holzhausen CBE, Carers UK
“Unpaid care – though largely overlooked – keeps our families, communities and society functioning. At the Centre for Ageing Better, good health and financial security are two of the outcomes we want for older people in England. But we know all too well that caring responsibilities have a significant impact on these outcomes. And that there are huge inequalities in who provides unpaid care and how much. So although we don’t work directly on unpaid care, we recognise that it’s a vital part of the bigger picture and we include data on it in our flagship State of Ageing report. This new dashboard makes that task so much easier – it is a veritable goldmine of information on unpaid care at a local level across the country, all in one place and readily broken down in myriad ways. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to participate in its development and to see data that I had suggested be included in the finished product.”
Dr Aideen Young, Centre for Ageing Better
“It’s a really powerful tool which allows the user to gain detailed and valuable insights into who exactly unpaid carers are and how their caring role may intersect with other parts of their identity. We know that robust quantitative data is key to supporting decision making, and for smaller VCS organisations in particular finding or generating this data can be too resource intensive. It was a really valuable experience being involved in the dashboard development process and hearing first hand why certain design decisions were made.”
Louis Horsley, National Voices
“Being involved in the testing of the Unpaid Care Dashboard has been both valuable and rewarding. It’s a powerful tool that makes local data about carers accessible and clear, particularly around aspects like ethnicity which is important to me and also economic activity. I’m pleased to see how our feedback from the workshops has shaped a resource that will support better understanding and action of unpaid carers.”
Matthew McKenzie, unpaid carer and Carers UK volunteer
“Through collaboration with the Centre For Care, development of the dashboard for Unpaid Carers was realised by working closely with the Commitment to Carers Partnership to ensure the tool was co-designed, user-focused, and aligned with local priorities to be used in future transformational support of Unpaid Carers across our communities.”
Jo Cameron, Programme Lead, South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB)
Citation:
Thanks for using the dashboard! If you reference or use any of the data or visualisations from the dashboard, we kindly ask that you cite the dashboard, as this helps us demonstrate its reach and impact and supports future development. To cite the dashboard, please use the following:
Petrillo, M., Siddall, T., and Bennett, M. (2025). Unpaid Care Dashboard. Centre for Care. Available at: https://centreforcare.ac.uk/uuc-dashboard
Data
The dashboard uses data from the Census 2011 and 2021. All data is publicly available. Data on the Value of Care provided by unpaid carers are instead authors’ calculations based on Census data and The Uk Household Longitudinal Study Survey.
Acknowledgements
The dashboard was co-funded by Research England’s Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) via the University of Sheffield’s Internal Knowledge Exchange Scheme and the Centre for Care.
The dashboard was developed by Thomas L Siddall using Microsoft Power Bi Software and Python.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is faith included in the Dashboard?
Yes it can be reviewed on the demographic section – at the lower left hand side of the website
In regards to Local Authority District (LAD) – are there any plans to be able to look at the data by political constituencies?
Yes, It is something we might explore in the future.
If we needed data at County Council level (rather than the individual districts) and sent the type of data we required, would it be possible to extract this?
At the moment we are unable to offer this function on the Dashboard and cannot accommodate individual requests
Are you able to consider adding whole Local Authority areas in addition to districts in the search? For example, if I wanted carer data across the whole contract area in Lincolnshire, or if I was researching a new county area, it would be good to just select ‘XX County Council’ rather than having to google what all the different districts are.
Yes, we plan to add this in the future but currently unable to advise on the timeframe for this being available.
Are you able to break down ethnicity ONS categories on the Dashboard? The ethnicity categories are very broad – is there a way to delve into more refined categories? E.g. Does the “white” category include white citizens of non-UK origin e.g. white European?
The “White” category in the dashboard includes White citizens of non-UK origin, such as those identifying as Polish, Romanian, and other European backgrounds. For a full breakdown of the ethnic categories, you can refer to the ONS classification here:
ONS Ethnic Group Detailed
Can you download or copy the graphics for use in reports?
Yes you can. Go to the Data request form, fill out the Google form and all graphs and tables will be sent over to you. Don’t forget to cite the dashboard using: Petrillo, M., Siddall, T., and Bennett, M. (2025). Unpaid Care Dashboard. Centre for Care. Available at: https://centreforcare.ac.uk/uuc-dashboard
Does the Dashboard cover the census data ‘Have you previously served in the UK Armed forces‘?
No this information is not included in the dashboard at the moment
Can I select multiple categories or areas by Integrated Care Board (ICB) or region?
Yes, this can be completed manually.
Firstly, select the LADs that make an ICB or a region. To do that, press and hold CTRL on your keyboard and select all the LADs that make up the ICB/region (please check the Dashboard guidance materials online if you have trouble doing so). We plan to include data directly by region and ICB in the future.
Does the age range go further than “Under 15”? The Census data for this age group is invaluable (e.g. Almost 3000 5 to 9 year old young carers caring 50+ hours a week).
Unfortunately, some data are not available for young carers due to risk of identification. Given that the dashboard allows you to select sex, age, ethnicity, disability, health status and geographical areas, the risk of identification is very high.
When granting the data request, do you provide the raw disaggregated data? For example, on the dashboard, the age is categorised but will this variable be more disaggregated for the raw data?
No, the data have been categorised in a way that makes the data as harmonised as possible across years and LADs as this is the main aim of the dashboard. So the data you can request is the same data you can visualise on the dashboard.
How did you determine what the value of care supplied was? I.e. based on paying a carer or does it include on-costs?
For more details on how we computed the value of care, check our Valuing Carers reports.
Valuing Carers 2021, England and Wales
Valuing Carers 2021, Northern Ireland
Valuing Carers 2022, Scotland
Valuing Carers 2021/22: the value of unpaid care in the UK
Is there data to show the differences between carers for somebody with Learning Disabilities? As opposed to carers for somebody with dementia, mental illness etc.
This information is not included at the moment in the dashboard. We plan to incorporate it in the future.
Would it be possible to break down “age 65+”?. All the other age ranges are 15 years or less, whereas age 65+ covers at least 35 years, when there are huge changes to our lives.…for example, at age 90+.
No this is not possible – as per above problem with identification.
Does “health” incorporate mental health or is that a separate metric? Also, “health” in the Census is based on what we all write on our Census forms. So a person could well tick the box that they’re “In poor health” if their mental health feels poor.
The census typically includes questions about long-term health conditions, including both physical and mental health conditions, and their impact on daily life. Specifically, the census may ask about conditions that have lasted or are expected to last a certain period (e.g., 12 months or more) and how they affect an individual’s wellbeing.
Is there a way of viewing the percentage of carers by industry, rather than the way round it’s presented currently? For example, the ability to see how many people within the agriculture and utilities sector are carers (then broken down by hours of care).
At the moment, the dashboard only presents the data in its current format. We may consider adding another table in the future to display the information the other way around—showing the percentage of carers within each industry and breaking it down by hours of care.
How would I cite this resource?
Thanks for using the dashboard! To cite the dashboard, please use the following:
Petrillo, M., Siddall, T., and Bennett, M. (2025). Unpaid Care Dashboard. Centre for Care. Available at: https://centreforcare.ac.uk/uuc-dashboard