Hundreds of thousands will be part-time carers by 2035

An extra 400,000 people will be caring for their elderly, sick or disabled relatives for more than 10 hours a week by 2035, new analysis which lays bare the scale of social care needs in the UK suggests.

- HOLLY BANCROFT

As the UK population gets older and lives with illness longer, many more people will have to step in to provide the care that health and social care services can’t. New research from think tank Joseph Rowntree Foundation projects that 990,000 more people will be providing some type of informal care by 2035 – an increase of 10.6 per cent compared to now.

The anti-poverty charity is calling for the government to create a future care needs taskforce, which would look at ways to support the booming number of informal carers.

The report found that paid care services would be insufficient to meet the growing need for support. Since 2016, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that only a fifth of over-65s in the UK who needed care used paid-for services alone. The rest used just informal unpaid care or a combination of both.

Researchers projected that 10 years from now, there will be 4 million people providing 10 hours or more of care, and 10.3 million carers in total.