More than a million extra people will be providing informal care over the next decade, a charity has said, calling for a government plan to avoid a ‘crisis of care’.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has projected that 990,000 more people in the UK have informal caring responsibilities by 2035.
It warned that support for unpaid carers remained ‘inadequate’, and put them at risk of poverty.
The JRF also warned that the paid care system was ‘unfit’ to meet growing care needs.
It found that since 2016, just a fifth of people who required care accessed paid care services alone – with the rest at least partly reliant on informal care.
The charity called for the creation of a cross-government taskforce, bringing together ministers responsible for care, work, benefits and communities, to plan for growing demands to prevent a ‘crisis of care’.
Priorities would be to make paid services more available and affordable, while increasing benefits and employment support for unpaid carers, the JRF said.
