Caring Roles

The roles of unpaid carers are highly varied. Carers can help the people they care for in many different ways; such as by providing emotional support or by helping with shopping, cleaning and other domestic tasks. Some carers will be caring more intensively than others and may be caring for more than one person. This will all contribute to the impact that providing care and support has on a carer.

The analysis presented here is based on those carers for whom information was available. Some organisations only provide certain support services, and so only collect information relevant to those services. Others will only record certain information if the unpaid carer has a support plan. Therefore, not all organisations will have information on every topic covered in this report. 

Ability and Willingness to provide unpaid care

The Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 aims to enable unpaid carers to be better supported so that they can continue to care, if they wish to do so. There will be some cases where carers are not able or willing to provide care and support but may still have to continue to do so.

Based on the 15,620 records for which information on both carers’ ability and willingness to provide care was available, the data suggests that 98% of carers were willing to provide care and that 97% were able to do so in 2022-23. This is the same as in 2021-22. The data also suggests that 96% of carers were both able and willing to provide care.

Intensity of caring

Based on the 31,780 records with information on intensity of care in 2022-23, 55% of unpaid carers who were supported by local services spent an average of 50+ hours a week providing unpaid care. This is similar to last year and is around double the proportion (27%) reported in the Scotland’s Carers report, which looked at the total caring population. This may reflect the fact that people with more intense caring roles are more likely to seek support from local services.

In 2022-23, 17% of carers for whom information on intensity of care was available spent less than 19 hours per week providing care while 28% spent 20 – 49 hours a week providing unpaid care.

Figure 3 shows that the intensity of care provided varied between adult carers and young carers. In 2022-23, 66% of young carers spent less than 19 hours a week providing care compared to 9% of adult carers. This likely reflects differences in the capacity for, and the appropriateness of, higher levels of caring between adult carers and young carers. 63% of adult carers supported by local services cared for 50+ hours a week on average.

Figure 3: Three in five adult carers cared for 50+ hours of care per week on average in 2022-23

Source: Carers Census, Scotland, 2022-23. Based on 31,780 records containing information on intensity of care provided.

Impact of caring on unpaid carers

Providing care and support to family members, friends and neighbours can have multiple impacts, both positive and negative, on a carer’s life.

There were 21,520 records with information on the impact of the caring role in 2022-23, including 3,220 records for young carers. Carers could experience multiple impacts from their caring role. The most commonly reported impact of caring was on carers’ emotional well-being, with this being reported for 79% of adult carers (an increase from 68% in 2021-22) and 89% of young carers (up from 85% in 2021-22). This was followed by impacts on carers’ life balance, for 75% of adult carers (compared to 66% last year) and 59% of young carers (roughly the same as last year).

As seen in Figure 4, impacts on health and future plans were also reported for more than half of adult carers. Impacts on the carer’s living environment were more likely to be reported for young carers than adult carers.

Figure 4: The most common impacts experienced by carers due to their caring role were on their emotional well-being and life balance

Source: Carers Census, Scotland, 2022-23. Based on 18,270 records for Adult Carers and 3,220 records for Young Carers.

The impacts of providing care also appear to vary depending on the average number of hours of cared provided per week. The data suggests that carers providing more hours of care a week are more likely to experience impacts such as on their health and future plans. For instance, 31% of carers providing up to 19 hours a week of care experienced an impact on their health in 2022-23 compared to 65% of those caring for 50+ hours a week.

The data also shows that carers who cared for more hours a week were more likely to feel valued and slightly less likely to experience impacts on emotional well-being. This is similar to last year’s results.

Figure 5: In 2022-23, carers were more likely to experience impacts, such as on their health, with more intense caring roles

Source: Carers Census, Scotland, 2022-23. Based on 19,510 records with information on caring intensity and impact.

While the data does not show much variation by deprivation overall, people living in areas within the most deprived SIMD decile appear more likely to experience impacts on their finance and employment. For instance, impacts on carers’ finances were reported for 36% of carers in all SIMD deciles, but were reported for 44% of carers living in areas within the most deprived SIMD decile. This is similar to last year.

The data also showed some variation in the impacts reported for different carer relationships or reasons for caring (e.g. cared for person’s dementia, learning disability etc.). For instance, in 2022-23 it was more common for unpaid carers who were caring for someone with dementia to experience impacts on their health and future plans than unpaid carers overall. 57% of all unpaid carers for whom information was available were recorded as experiencing impacts on their future plans compared to 67% of those caring for someone with dementia.

However, these results should be treated with caution due to the complexities involved when a carer cares for more than one person. For instance, if a carer is caring for both a spouse with dementia and an elderly neighbour then each role will have its own challenges and could result in different impacts on the carer which cannot be separated out in the data.