how desperate unpaid carers really are...

Carers UK recently published research into how many unpaid carers are in poverty (spoiler: being a carer means you're x2 as likely to be in poverty than if you're not).

Despite being lauded by government and other agencies in recognition of the roughly £160 BILLION that we save the government EACH YEAR, there's still plenty of disgruntlement amongst us for the lack or recognition and support we receive in turn - for example: for those eligible to qualify to be able to apply for carers allowance (plot twist: despite having sole unpaid caring responsibilities for several family members in my immediate household, I'm only eligible to receive £6 each week), this only offers about £2 per hour that we can receive in recognition of the time we spend caring, which prevents for from being 'economically active' otherwise: earning money to support ourselves as others can. For comparison, the legal minimum wage we would have to be paid for any job, however menial, starts at £6.40 per hour.

The report by Carers UK digs into this topic in painful and shocking detail. And while others have done far better jobs that I in looking at the wider dimensions of how carers suffer inescapable poverty because of the nature of the role: https://numbereighteeninthecorner.blog/2024/09/19/carer-servitude/, - I'm focussing here on what this latest research tells us about how being an unpaid carer affects those of us who are also self-employed. 

Now, before we get into Carers UK's research, to 'set the scene' here, self-employment in general is:

• one of the worst things you can do for your mental well-being; 
• likely to mean you earn less for doing the same job than if you were salaried;
• worse than being employed for your long-term health.

And yet roughly 500,000 of us who are unpaid carers are choosing this way of working on top of being a carer, which in itself is recognised as being:

• highly stressful;
• leaves us socially isolated;
• bad for our mental well-being;
• roughly, up to £20,000 worse off EACH YEAR. 

So lets do the reveal: unpaid carers who are also self-employed are x2 more likely to be in poverty than their employed counterparts, who also have caring responsibilities (and to 'rub salt in the wound', we don't get the same legal recognition or protection as they do...) 

So why are so many of us pursuing this apparent nonsense of pushing ourselves even further 'over the edge' by 'doing' self-employment alongside our caring role, when all the evidence above says it's the worst thing anyone could do to themselves?

As Carers UK research highlights, nearly half of people who were salaried before becoming carers are forced to give up their jobs, because they find the two roles aren't compatible. 

The current rules on carers allowances (assuming you're eligible to be able to be apply for it, then and lucky enough to get it) means that you can't earn more than £151 a week. Combined with the max carers allowance of £81.90, this would mean you have a maximum income potential of roughly £12,000 a year to live (covering housing, food, utilities, clothing, etc). That's less than half of what's recognised as a person needing to earn in order to have a minimum acceptable standard of living. This means that many carers simply can't afford to apply for/live on carers allowance, and as previously highlighted, quite a lot of demands and requirements of being an employee are incompatible with being a carer.

Which means that short of picking the winning numbers on the lottery, or robbing a bank, the only other choice is either living in deep poverty or doing self-employment (although as the research shows, doing self-employment is no guarantee you won't escape the poverty trap).

And I've also heard of some of my contemporaries in this space who've openly shared that taking on this most stressful of all employments was the best way they could find to help them find a counter-balance to the stresses and responsibilities of being a carer. Which takes us back to the earlier point of how tough being a carer is - but how tough must it be, for the most stressful of all employments to be seen as a type of respite from it?  

So for anyone out there who's also a carer as well as being self-employed: I hope you take some comfort from this post, in it offering you a recognition of how tough life really is for you. And for anyone who isn't: I hope you can use some of the feelings that this post has (hopefully) stirred up in you to act in support for carers of all types. 

how better support for carers could instantly see growth in 20% of businesses across the economy

I've written in the past about how unpaid carers are usually invisible and overlooked, and that for those of us who are also self-employed, we're even more so, because we're not even recognised in law (unlike our counterparts who may be in salaried employment, and despite there being an equal likelihood that if you are able to work while also an unpaid carer, you'll be doing it in this way).

I've also shared the statistics about how this lack of support for those of us who are (trying to) trade and maintain caring roles, means that 'UK plc' is at least £5billion a year worse off than it might otherwise be.

But I've recently also started to have conversations with some different local business support bodies', and start-up programme, managers who are beginning to recognise that they perhaps aren't doing anything/enough to consider the design of their offers and encouragements with regards to the circumstances and realities of people with caring responsibilities.

This came to the fore for me recently, as part of an event organised by the Collective Leadership Group, who'd invited me to showcase some of my research and efforts around the realities of being an unpaid carers and an entrepreneur.

As part of this event, Hatch Enterprise shared the findings of a recent study that they'd undertaken into the experiences and barriers people face in relation to the concept and idea of entrepreneurship. One of their question prompts from their surveys in this was about barriers entrepreneurs were experiencing that were hindering and limiting the success of their respective ventures. As well as questions around gender, geography, ethnicity, and disability (which remain depressingly entrenched), their survey also asked about caring responsibilities:

For me, this is an exciting chart, because it highlights and challenges:

1) the extent to which all existing businesses are being constrained, because of a lack of relevant and appropriately designed support available to them by business support providers and caring bodies;

2) that there's near parity in how men and women are affected - caring is usually associated with women, but as I've been seeing over the last few years, there's far more men doing it than might be otherwise expected.

The wider session was also encouraging, as as I shared my notes and ideas based on the research and evidences I'm identifying around this topic, people agreed that there's a lot of 'blindness' to not only how carers are thought about (or not) when programmes and projects to support different groups of people and communities and being designed and run; but also to the very limited and outdated stereotypes about the scope and range of understanding that most people have in relation to what caring roles can look like and involve, and who has them.