Is there a stereotypical view of unpaid carers? Who do you automatically think of when someone says they’re a carer for a loved one?

‘In State of Caring 2025 research by Carers UK found that the most common person being cared for was a spouse (39%), followed by a parent/parent-in-law (34%), then a son/daughter aged 18 or over (22%), then a child aged 18 or under (13%)’.

When Andy Burnham spoke about social care in England the other week, the emphasis seemed to focus on Adult care, specifically highlighting the elderly community.

Whilst raising this issue is a good thing by Burnham, it runs the risk of perpetuating the stereotype of people being cared for and those caring for them.

Adult care isn’t limited to partners or adult children caring for elderly loved ones with dementia/alzheimers. Its true, a lot are, but partners and adult children are caring for loved ones with Mental Health diagnoses, drug/alcohol dependency, physical disabilities, Neurodivergence, and life limiting illnesses. Or multiple conditions.

There are young carers, young adult carers and people in-between aged 25 to 60 doing the same unpaid care.

Why do sterotypes matter and why we need to dispel them? We need to be aware when discussing unpaid carers, who exactly is being cared for and by whom. So that we ensure that we don’t leave out or ignore all of the many diverse people caring, unseen.

Especially those from different backgrounds, cultures, LGBTQIA +, young carers and parents caring for adult children.

If we don’t highlight and talk about the many different people who are unpaid carers we isolate them. If all we see is white, older people with dementia or physical disabilities in images, newsletters, articles, and the media it means that those who look after anyone outside of this won’t recognise themselves as carers. They will continue to care without support, without recognition, wellbeing support, financial support, respite, and more.

Media, TV, and Film enforces these stereotypes, Eastenders, Coronation Street have recent and current stories on dementia with Nigel and Debbie. During carers week Eastenders did a token effort of covering Will as a young carer for his sister Janet with Downs, roughly 5 minutes worth.

Coronation Street had a previous story of Paul, Bernie, Billy and MND, but didn’t look at it from a carers perspective.

Films with Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins in the Father, and others such as Still Alice, Elizabeth is Missing are all great films on dementia.

You will find it hard to find others that actually portray carers of people with other conditions.

GP surgeries, hospitals and clinics all have a duty of care to provide information to unpaid carers , have you been told you’re a carer by any of these?

My surgery has a corner where there is a board for unpaid carers, all the information on there is about dementia and where to get support and information for that. Absolutely nothing else.

I found out I was an unpaid carer from twitter, before it became the hell hole it is now! I saw a tweet from Carers UK asking if you are caring for someone with specific conditions and that you’re entitled to a carers assessment. That started my realisation that I was actually an unpaid carer, and had probably been one for years.

How do we solve the stereotypes of unpaid carers? By better signposting from GPs, hospitals, clinics, nurses, doctors and other health professionals. That’s the basic starting point. But before that can happen they need better education on unpaid carers in their training to enable them to even recognise us.

Charities such as Carers UK, Carers Trust do great work promoting unpaid carers, in highlighting us to Goverments and Ministers, but their, websites, and publications are out of date in terms of images they use in these. The information in my GP surgery is provided to them from these charities, which as mentioned needs updating.

Councils and local authorities also need to update their information and publications as they also need images of different carers, and different conditions. I could go on, but this post is lengthy enough as it is.

How do we as unpaid carers help? Well there’s this magic word that everyone is very keen to be seen to be doing – Coproduction! Yep its a good thing to be seen to be doing, councils, charities, governments, higher education, recovery colleges, and more love coproduction.

So they should, its vital that our voices are included in everything they produce, create. Services, information, support all needs to have us involved.

Coproduction is great, its fab to be included and have a seat at the table, BUT its only of real value if we are actually listened to. Its very easy for these organisations to say we’ve done this in coproduction so its great, when in reality, have they listened to us? Reflected on and made the changes, recommendations we have put forward? Or just heard us and ignored us?

I have experience of both. On the whole the last bit. Myself and another unpaid carer were asked to look at a lengthy booklet our local authority was producing for unpaid carers. We both raised that it only spoke to one type of carer, those caring for older loved ones. We made suggestions, and yet it still only covers that. The front cover has on it….yes you guessed it, white older people!

Frustrating isn’t it. I see it as my job to raise our profile, those of us caring for others who get left behind in publications, on websites, in government, media, local authority discussions.

I’m not knocking those caring for the older generation, its right that they have a high profile, coverage and support. But so do the rest of us, otherwise our loved ones and we are isolated further.