“Meet the nation’s ghost workforce: a growing army of unpaid cooks, nurses, cleaners and physios who slog away day and night, out of sight behind their front doors.”

Today’s column is on the UK’s 6 million unpaid carers propping up the broken social care system. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/11/carers-allowance-britain-unpaid-workforce?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

April 11, 2026 - 09:26 UTC

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Thank you for this article, for sharing Nessa's words, and for calling unpaid carers a 'workforce'. I hope people start adopting this term - I certainly will!
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There should absolutely not be any <18 carers but it is also not unreasonable to expect adult family members to do the bulk of caring for other close family members - in France it is a legal obligation, although backed up with fairly strong community support.
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It’s not unreasonable to expect a son to pop in to make his elderly Dad tea, for example, but it is unreasonable to expect 24/7 medical and physical support for a disabled adult who would prefer the choice of a PA and not their Mum. And it’s unreasonable to force carers into poverty or ill health.
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Thank you. You cite the enormous financial benefit (savings) the govt/nation extracts from carers' largely unpaid work; I imagine there are also massive invisible costs, both knock-on costs of the impact on carers' own health & financial health, as well as their lost contributions to the economy.
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Yes, I included the 62% of CA recipients are in poverty stat but there’s also terrible numbers about the impact on mental and physical health. Nessa really is a snapshot of what’s happening to many full time family carers.
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as an unpaid carer 65p an hour would be an increase for me. My mother is at latter stages of dementia and needs a lot of care.
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Carers allowance should be much much higher to reflect the hard work being undertaken by so many exhausted family carers.
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Thank you for raising this, something really does need to be done ❤️
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Thanks so much. It’s amazing - and predictable - how little attention this subject gets.
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