BACKGROUND

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The majority of long-term care for older people in England is provided by family and friends. If the provision of unpaid care does not rise in line with needs there will be added pressure on formal services and/or increased unmet need for care. In this context, DHSC has requested further ASCRU research on unpaid care to inform policy on support for carers and to input into projections of demand for formal long-term care and associated expenditure.

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AIMS

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• To examine who provides unpaid care for whom and for how many hours in various circumstances, such as differences in travel time between carer and older person needing care.

• To explore the frequency of and arrangements for shared care within the family and the factors associated with the frequency and care arrangements. 

• To provide further evidence on attitudes and expectations about providing unpaid care to parents if they require it in the future.

• To produce updated projections of provision of unpaid care and of the potential gap between supply of unpaid care and demand for care for older people. ​
   

METHODS

 

ASCRU1 included a study of attitudes to providing care for parents if and when they require it in the future and a study to produce projections of future provision of unpaid care to older people under a range of assumptions about trends in drivers of ability to provide care and attitudes to providing unpaid care. This project will build on the findings of those two projects.   

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We will consult with key stakeholders about priority issues and scenarios to develop and examine in new projections of supply of unpaid care for older people. We will then conduct secondary analysis of relevant national surveys, further analysis of the ASCRU attitudes to caring survey and interviews or focus groups. 

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We will update our model making projections of future supply of unpaid care, using more recent data such as 2024-based population projections. We will run scenarios to explore the impact of (for example, variant population projections, variant trends in employment and variant expectations/propensity to provide care (by age, gender, education etc). We will then compare our projections of supply of unpaid care with our projections (from our ASCRU work on long-term care projections) of demand for care for older people.