A think-tank report said that carer's allowance should be abolished. The complexity of the allowance made it difficult to claim, and the system needed to be much more flexible in order to provide the right support and help to people who combined care and paid work. The allowance should be replaced by a single benefit for all people who were out of work – replacing not only carer's allowance but also income support, jobseeker's allowance, and employment and support allowance (the benefit due to replace incapacity benefit).
Source: Sophie Moullin, Care in a New Welfare Society: Unpaid care, welfare and employment, Institute for Public Policy Research (020 7470 6100)
Links: Report | IPPR press release | Counsel and Care press release | Carers UK press release | BBC report
Date: 2007-Dec
A report set out the design of a new 'social contract' for care. It was based on the premises that replacing all unpaid care with formal care services was both impossible and undesirable; that carers were crucial partners in delivering social care; and that carers needed independence, income, and life choices, and should not pay a penalty for the contribution they made.
Source: Sue Yeandle and Lisa Buckner, Carers, Employment and Services: Time for a new social contract?, Carers UK (020 7566 7626)
Links: Carers UK press release | Community Care report
Date: 2007-Nov
Four linked reports examined the lives of carers, focusing on support services and work opportunities. Over 40 per cent of those caring full-time and not in work said that they could not return to employment because of the lack of services available.
Source: Sue Yeandle, Cinnamon Bennett, Lisa Buckner, Gary Fry and Christopher Price, Stages and Transitions in the Experience of Caring, Carers UK (020 7566 7626) | Sue Yeandle, Cinnamon Bennett, Lisa Buckner, Gary Fry and Christopher Price, Managing Caring and Employment, Carers UK | Sue Yeandle, Cinnamon Bennett, Lisa Buckner, Gary Fry and Christopher Price, Diversity in Caring: towards equality for carers, Carers UK | Sue Yeandle, Cinnamon Bennett, Lisa Buckner, Carers, Employment and Services in their Local Context, Carers UK
Links: Report (1) | Report (2) | Report (3) | Report (4) | Carers UK press release | Leeds University press release | Guardian report
Date: 2007-Oct
A report called for the benefits system to be reformed so that when people reached pension age they still had access to carer's allowance. The government should increase the carer's allowance to equal the national minimum wage, and increase the carer's premium in income support or pension credit.
Source: Caroline Bernard, A New Strategy for Carers: Better support for families and carers of older people, Counsel and Care (020 7241 8555)
Links: Report | Counsel and Care press release | Community Care report
Date: 2007-Oct
An article examined the grounds on which those who provided informal social care for dependent adults and children could be held to warrant public support, and what obligations they should accept in return.
Source: Alan Deacon, 'Civic labour or doulia? Care, reciprocity and welfare', Social Policy and Society, Volume 6 Issue 4
Links: Abstract
Date: 2007-Sep
The government announced that, from 1 October 2007, the maximum amount of money that carers in Great Britain would be allowed to earn without losing their entitlement to carer's allowance would rise from £87 to £95 a week, after expenses such as income tax and national insurance contributions had been taken into account.
Source: Press release 20 September 2007, Department for Work and Pensions (020 7712 2171)
Links: DWP press release | Age Concern press release | Carers UK press release
Date: 2007-Sep
The government announced that a Standing Commission on Carers would be established. The Commission would ensure that the voice of carers was central to the development of government policy. It would also look at how carers would be affected by long-term issues, such as the ageing of carers, and people's increasing preference to be cared for in their own home.
Source: Press release 3 September 2007, Department of Health (020 7210 4850)
Links: DH press release | Carers UK press release | EFD press release | BMA press release | Community Care report | Guardian report
Date: 2007-Sep
A report said that the value of unpaid support provided by carers was £87 billion in 2006-07 – 52 per cent higher than a previous estimate of £57 billion in 2002. The average carer was saving the nation over £15,260 a year.
Source: Lisa Buckner and Sue Yeandle, Valuing Carers: Calculating the value of unpaid care, Carers UK (020 7566 7626)
Links: Report | Carers UK press release | Leeds University press release | BBC report | Personnel Today report | Community Care report
Date: 2007-Sep
A report examined the experiences of Disability and Carers? Service customers. Customers found claim forms to be lengthy and confusing. Once an application had been made, customers often did not know whether or not they would receive the award. The disability claims process was dramatically eased with the intervention of a professional adviser.
Source: Janine Hawkins, Carol Goldstone and Meena Bhagat, Knowing and Understanding Disability and Carers Service Customers, Research Report 439, Department for Work and Pensions (0113 399 4040)
Date: 2007-Jul
A paper recommended that a system of tax concessions be established to encourage employers to support their employees with the cost of qualifying care. Care vouchers would be provided by employers, as a benefit to help their staff who were carers. The vouchers would be an 'effective and affordable' way to bring extra funding to older and disabled people, and would help businesses to retain the skills of valued and experienced employees – particularly older and female workers. An independent evaluation of the proposal predicted that for £37 million invested by the government through the tax break, £83 million could be generated for care services.
Source: Care Vouchers Proposal, Counsel and Care (020 7241 8555) and other organizations | Tom Snell, Jos?-Luis Fern?ndez and Russell Bennetts, Tax Exemptions on Care Vouchers for Working Carers: An economic analysis, Personal Social Services Research Unit/London School of Economics (020 7955 6238)
Links: Paper | PSSRU report | Counsel and Care press release | LGA press release | PRTC press release | LSE press release | Guardian report
Date: 2007-Jul
An article examined three distinguishing features of caring – that it involves the development of a relationship; that caring responsibilities and needs are unequally distributed; and that social norms influence the allocation of care and caring responsibilities – to draw out their implications for analyzing caring and its movement between unpaid and paid economies.
Source: Susan Himmelweit, 'The prospects for caring: economic theory and policy analysis', Cambridge Journal of Economics, Volume 31 Number 4
Links: Abstract
Date: 2007-Jul
An article examined projections of receipt of informal care by disabled older people from their spouses and (adult) children to 2031 in England. Over the period, care by spouses was likely to increase substantially: but if existing patterns of care remained the same, care by children would also need to increase by nearly 60 per cent by 2031. It was not clear that the supply of care by children would rise to meet this demand.
Source: Linda Pickard, Raphael Wittenberg, Adelina Comas-Herrera, Derek King and Juliette Malley, 'Care by spouses, care by children: projections of informal care for older people in England to 2031', Social Policy and Society, Volume 6 Issue 3
Links: Abstract
Date: 2007-Jul
An article examined the effectiveness of financial and labour market support to encourage carers to work, highlighting the tensions underlying existing measures to help carers work and care.
Source: Hilary Arksey, 'Combining work and care: the reality of policy tensions for carers', Benefits, Volume 15 Number 2
Links: Abstract
Date: 2007-Jul
A survey highlighted the negative impact that caring responsibilities could have on the relationship carers enjoyed with their partner. 66 per cent of those surveyed said that their relationship had suffered as a result of caring, while 60 per cent said they had little quality time together with their partner.
Source: Press release 11 June 2007, Carers UK (020 7566 7626)
Links: Carers UK press release
Date: 2007-Jun
A report was published of a study of 20 children who were helping to provide care for parents with serious mental health problems. The children were given disposable cameras in order to create photographic diaries of their caring, and other meaningful experiences.
Source: Jo Aldridge and Darren Sharp, Pictures of Young Caring, Young Carers Research Group/Loughborough University (01509 223383)
Links: Report
Date: 2007-May
A report examined the long-term financial impact of caring. A survey of nearly 3,000 carers found that they faced a severe financial penalty as soon as they started caring, unpaid, for a disabled or chronically ill relative or friend: yet their support was worth £57 billion per year to the state.
Source: Real Change, Not Short Change, Carers UK (020 7566 7626)
Links: Report | Carers UK press release | Age Concern press release | EDCM press release | Guardian report
Date: 2007-May
A Member of Parliament introduced a Bill which would require health bodies to identify patients who were carers or who had carers, and require that these 'identified carers' be referred to sources of help and support. The Bill would also require schools and local authority children?s services to have policies in place which supported young carers and their families.
Source: Carers (Identification and Support) Bill, Barbara Keeley MP, TSO (0870 600 5522)
Links: Hansard
Date: 2007-Apr
An article examined choice in relation to the informal carers of relatives, friends, or older people who were disabled or sick. Underpinning conceptual models of the relationship between carers and formal service providers shaped the extent to which carers could be offered choice and control on similar terms to service users. In particular, the exercise of choice by carers was likely to be highly problematic if it involved relinquishing some unpaid care-giving activities.
Source: Hilary Arksey and Caroline Glendinning, 'Choice in the context of informal care-giving', Health and Social Care in the Community, Volume 15 Issue 2
Links: Abstract
Date: 2007-Mar
An article examined evidence of what children and young people generally did to assist in the home, in order to help estimate how the lives of young carers differed from children and young people who were not carers.
Source: Janet Warren, 'Young carers: conventional or exaggerated levels of involvement in domestic and caring tasks?', Children & Society, Volume 21 Number 2
Links: Abstract
Date: 2007-Mar
The government published details of its 'New Deal for Carers' in England. £25 million would be spent on providing short-term home-based respite care for carers in crisis or emergency situations; £3 million would be allocated to the establishment of a national helpline for carers; and there would be a wide-ranging review of the 1999 national carers strategy.
Source: Press release 21 February 2007, Department of Health (020 7210 4850)
Links: DH press release | DRC press release | Age Concern press release | Carers UK press release | EDCM press release | Help the Aged press release | PRTC press release | BBC report | Personnel Today report
Date: 2007-Feb
An article examined the views of older carers (aged over 70) of adults with a learning disability about planning for the future. The findings showed a need for a proactive approach to information and support provision to enable these families to work through a process of making plans for the future.
Source: Laura Bowey and Alex McGlaughlin, 'Older carers of adults with a learning disability confront the future: issues and preferences in planning', British Journal of Social Work, Volume 37 Number 1
Links: Abstract
Date: 2007-Jan