Carers UK's Caring Survey - Have Your Say!

The Carers UK annual State of Caring survey is the most extensive survey into unpaid carers’ experiences in the UK. The survey will give Carers UK a really important insight into caring and housing.

Last year over 11,000 carers filled out the survey. With a new UK Government, there has never been a more important time to make sure that carers have a high profile and get concrete change.

Housing and Care

This year, there is a specific section on housing in the survey, focusing on 3 key questions – carers’ housing situations, any challenges carers might be experiencing with managing housing costs, and any changes to carers’ housing situations as a result of caring.

Carers UK is interested in hearing from all unpaid carers, including people working in the voluntary sector, public services, or housing associations who also might be unpaid carers and want to share their experiences. The survey covers a wide range of topics which helps to identify what carers need, and what the common issues are. This year Carers UK has returned to the topic of housing to better understand any challenges carers might be facing in this area.

Please share this survey with your contacts, and fill it in if you are a carer yourself.

Last year Carers UK used carers’ responses to:

• make several recommendations to prevent carer poverty through its newly launched Carer Poverty Coalition, a group of 130 national and local organisations which recently published a manifesto on supporting carers facing financial hardship.
• inform Carers UK’s recently published manifesto calling on political parties to commit to a new social contract for unpaid carers.
• inform a new report that Carers UK published with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Carers which called for a National Carers Strategy.
• successfully campaign for new legislation allowing carers to take unpaid carers leave and to set down a good evidence base for the implementation of the Carer’s Leave Act 2023.
• campaign on overpayments of Carer’s Allowance, making the case for change leading to some commitments from Government to improve processes – although there is more to do on this.
• campaign on carers’ rights, where more progress needs to be made to ensure carers get the support they are entitled to.

In addition, the results from last year were discussed on national TV shows, as well as local BBC radio, and in many national and local newspapers, raising the profile of unpaid caring across the UK, with carers’ voices and experience at the heart of all of this coverage.

This year, the survey covers issues and areas that carers have said matter to them. The survey will close on 11 August and Carers UK will be sharing the results later in the year.