Supporting working carers

Supporting working carers

Business Disability Forum responded to the UK Government’s consultation on proposals to offer statutory carer’s leave to working carers. The proposal included five days unpaid leave per year to help support employees with caring responsibilities.

Our response to the consultation in 2020

To help form our response, we spoke to our members and to carers networks within our member organisations. Employers told us what they were currently doing to support working carers, and carers told us about the challenges they face while trying to balance their jobs with their caring responsibilities. We also spoke to leaders of carers networks who gave valuable insight into the trends they are seeing among carers today. Overall, participants told us that this proposal does not go far enough to remove the challenges experienced by working carers today. Business Disability Forum agreed with this and this key position formed the basis of our submission.

Our key recommendation to the Government is that they consider working carers to be entitled to reasonable adjustments in the same way that disabled employees are. We have seen for too long that carers in the workplace have not had enough protections in equality law and have lacked financially supported time off that other groups (such as working parents, via maternity and parental leave as an example) have been receiving for some time.

If the Government want to ensure working carers stay in work while continuing to provide the care that ultimate supports the health and social care system in the UK today, this proposal only offers a bare minimum baseline for what should be offered to support working carers.

Our policy team would like to thank everyone who took part in our discussion groups and in one-to-one interviews to share their experiences with us. We would particularly like to thank the carers who took part. Your insights helped us form our response and were invaluable to us. Many of you shared honest, very personal and, at times, heart-breaking stories about your experiences of caring for someone in your life while trying to be the best you can be at work. We hope our submission does your experiences and stories justice.

You can download and read our submission to the right of this page.

The Government’s response in October 2021

The Government will pursue the entitlement for working carers to request up to five days unpaid leave per year from their employer. You can read the Government’s full response here. We will continue to work with our members and working carers in our member organisations on wider carer related issues in work, in service provision, and in society.