Carers.

Carers are people who look after a relative, friend or partner who is ill, disabled, frail, has a mental health or substance misuse problem, without payment.

Most of us will be a carer at some point in our lives.

In the UK:

  • There are currently 6.5 million carers, around 1 in 10 of the population
  • One-third of carers, providing more than 50 hours of care a week, are over 65
  • Almost two-thirds of cared aged 60 – 94 have a disability or long term health problem
  • 83 percent of carers say that caring has had a negative effect on their physical health
  • 87 percent say caring has had a negative effect on their mental health
  • Two in five carers say they have put off treatment because of their caring responsibilities
  • There are 174,995 young people under the age of 18 who provide care
  • 13,029 of these young people provide care for 50 or more hours per week

Joint NHS and local authority commissioning aims to provide support services to carers that are personal, sensitive to individual needs, responsive to local communities, supporting carers in their caring role and protecting their health and wellbeing.

More information and advice for carers is available on the NHS website.

Getting support

Young carers

A young carer is someone under 18 years old who provides care for another person, such as a friend or family member.

A wide variety of advice and support is available to young carers:

Devon-wide Commitment to Carers

We will consider Carers in everything that we do.

All the health and care organisations under Together for Devon signed up to a Devon-wide Commitment to Carers, based on the seven principles below:

  1. Identifying Carers and supporting them
  2. Effective Support for Carers
  3. Enabling Carers to make informed choices re their caring role
  4. Staff awareness
  5. Information-sharing
  6. Respecting Carers as expert partners in care
  7. Carers whose roles are changing or who are more vulnerable

For more information about the principles, click here.

Devon’s health and care organisations have started to publish their individual Commitments to Carers which includes their organisation’s priorities for carers over the coming months and the name of a senior staff member responsible for supporting this.

See all signed documents here.