Carers Week 2019 – new research shows carers 7x more likely to be lonely than general public

Established 25 years ago, Carers Week is an annual awareness campaign which takes place to celebrate and recognise the vital contribution made by the UK’s unpaid carers. It is a time of intensive local activity with hundreds of events taking place across the UK.

To mark this, Carers Week have launched some new research which finds that unpaid carers looking after loved ones living with an illness, disability, mental health condition or as they grow older are seven times more likely to be lonely compared with the general public.

The extent of loneliness and poor wellbeing amongst carers is also revealed as new estimates suggest there could be far more people caring unpaid than previously thought. There are a potential 8.8 million adult carers in the UK, up from 6.3 million estimated in the 2011 census – a huge increase of a third.

Read the research here: www.carersweek.org

Finally, if you or your organisation would like to show your support for carers this Carers Week, you can do so by pledging on the online Carers Week wall. Click here to make a pledge: https://www.carersweek.org/get-involved/pledge-support