Caring Roles

The roles of unpaid carers are highly varied. Carers can help the people they care for in many different ways; from providing emotional support to helping with shopping, cleaning and other domestic tasks. Some carers will be caring more often and more intensively than others, and could provide care to more than one person. All of these factors can contribute to the impact of providing care and support on a carer.

The analysis presented in this section is based on those carers for whom information was provided. Some organisations only provide certain support services, and therefore only collect information relevant to those services. Others will only record certain information if the unpaid carer has a support plan. As a result, not all organisations provide information on all topics included within this report. 

Ability and Willingness to Provide Unpaid Care

The Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 aims to provide unpaid carers with more support to enable them to continue caring, 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 21,400 records where information regarding both carers’ ability and willingness to provide care had been submitted, the data suggests that 99% of carers were willing to provide care and that 97% were able to do so in 2023-24. This was very similar in 2022-23. The data also suggests that just under 97% of carers were both able and willing to provide care.

Intensity of Caring

Based on the 35,250 records with information on care intensity provided in 2023-24, 56% of unpaid carers supported by local services spent an average of 50+ hours a week providing unpaid care. This is similar to 2022-23 (55%), however is just under double the proportion reported in analysis of the experiences of carers using Health and Care Experience (HACE) survey data (2023-24, 31%), which looks at the entire caring population. This discrepancy may reflect the fact that people with more intense caring roles may be more likely to seek support from local services.

In 2023-24, 18% of carers for whom information on intensity of care was available spent up to 19 hours per week providing care, while 26% spent between 20 and 49 hours a week providing unpaid care.

Figure 3 shows that the intensity of care provided varied between adult carers and young carers. In 2023-24, 66% of young carers spent less than 19 hours a week providing care, in comparison to 10% of adult carers. Conversely, 65% of adult carers cared for 50+ hours a week on average, compared to just 3% of young carers. This may reflect variations in the capacity for, as well as the appropriateness of, higher levels of caring between young and adult carers.

Figure 3: More than three in five adult carers provided 50+ hours of care per week on average in 2023-24

Intensity of care provided by Carers identified in the Carers Census, Scotland, 2023-24.

Based on 35,250 records containing information on intensity of care provided.

Impact of Caring on Unpaid Carers

There were 26,290 records with information on the impact of caring roles in 2023-24, including 3,940 records for young carers.

There can be numerous positive and negative impacts on a carer’s life as a result of providing care and support to family members, friends and neighbours. The most commonly reported impact of caring was on carers’ emotional well-being, with this being reported for 86% of adult carers (an increase from 79% in 2022-23) and 91% of young carers (up from 89% in 2022-23). This was followed by impacts on carers’ life balance, recorded for 85% of adult carers (compared to 75% last year) and 67% of young carers (an increase from 59% in 2022-23).

There was also an increase in the proportion of unpaid carers reporting that they feel valued in their caring role in the most recent year, compared to 2022-23. This increase was more pronounced in adult carers, where 52% reported feeling valued (an increase from 46% last year), compared to 39% of young carers (up from 36% in 2022-23).

As seen in Figure 4, impacts on health and future plans were also reported for more than three in five adult carers. Impacts on the carer’s emotional well-being and 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 roles were on their emotional well-being and life balance

Impacts of caring on Adult and Young Carers identified in the Carers Census, Scotland, 2023-24.

Based on 22,260 records where information is available on Adult Carers, and 3,940 records for Young Carers.

The impacts of providing care also appear to vary depending on the intensity of care 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 example, 34% of carers providing up to 19 hours of care a week experienced an impact on their health in 2023-24, compared to 72% of those caring for 50+ hours a week. Similarly, 37% of carers providing up to 19 hours of care experienced an impact on their future plans, compared to 71% of those caring for 50+ hours a week.

The data also shows that carers with more intense caring roles were more likely to feel valued (53% of carers providing 50+ hours a week, compared to 37% of those providing up to 19 hours), which is similar to last year’s results.  

In 2023-24, results suggest that the likelihood of reporting impacts on emotional well-being did not depend as much on caring intensity as other types of impacts. The proportion of carers providing 50+ hours of care per week who reported impacts on their emotional well-being was largely similar to those providing up to 19 hours of care per week (87% and 85%, respectively). These proportions are higher than in 2022-23 (80% and 83%, respectively), however the similarity across different caring intensities in reports of impacts on emotional well-being is consistent in 2022-23 and 2023-24.

Figure 5: In 2023-24, carers with more intense caring roles were more likely to experience impacts, such as on their health

Impacts of caring by care intensity provided by carers identified in the Carers Census, Scotland, 2023-24.

Based on 22,580 records where information is available on caring intensity and impact.

Whilst the data shows a general trend of increased impacts of caring roles in areas within more deprived SIMD deciles compared to less deprived deciles, this effect is particularly pronounced for impacts on finances and living environments. For instance, impacts on carers’ finances were reported for 45% of carers in all SIMD deciles, but were reported for 54% of carers living in areas within the most deprived SIMD decile. This is an increase from 2022-23, which reported 36% and 44%, respectively.

The data also showed some variation in the impacts reported for different reasons for caring (for example, cared for person’s dementia, learning disability etc.). For instance, in 2023-24 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. 69% of those caring for someone with dementia were recorded as experiencing impacts on their health, compared to 62% of all unpaid carers, for whom information was available.

Similarly, unpaid carers supporting someone with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) more often experienced impacts on emotional well-being (89% of those caring for someone with ASD, compared to 86% of all carers), finances (54% of those caring for someone with ASD, compared to 45% of all carers), and employment (49% of those caring for someone with ASD, compared to 40% of all carers) than unpaid carers overall.

These findings should, however, be interpreted with caution due to the complexities associated with a carer caring 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.