What proportion of NHS staff are carers?

A carer is someone who looks after a friend or family member who needs support due to illness, frailty, disability, a mental health problem or an addiction. Being a carer can have a significant impact on an individual’s health and wellbeing, and is a key reason why people need to reduce their working hours or stop work altogether. A recent Carers UK report calls for a new statutory right to paid carer’s leave, building on the five days of unpaid leave already secured in the Carer’s Leave Act 2023. This is against a backdrop of diminishing support for carers over the last few years.

Retaining experienced staff is a key challenge for every workforce and is especially important in the NHS, which is facing significant staffing challenges and has seen a decline in the number of experienced staff over time. In the NHS, according to a GMC survey of doctors, almost one in 13 respondents (7.8%) who had stopped working in the UK did so because of a caring responsibility other than childcare.

The most recent NHS Staff Survey asked: “Do you look after, or give any help or support to family members, friends, neighbours or others because of either: long term physical or mental ill health / disability, or problems related to old age?” The responses showed that a third (32%) of all NHS staff are carers. Across all trust types, female staff are more likely to be carers than their male counterparts (33% v 27%), as shown in the chart below, while staff aged between 51-65 are most likely to be carers (43%). Overall, a much higher proportion of NHS staff report being carers (one in three) than in the general population (one in 11) based on the most recent Census.

Staff working in community trusts (37%) and mental health and learning disability trusts (36%) are those most likely to be carers. If you look at those aged 51-65 working in mental health or community trusts, almost half of survey respondents (46.84%/47.5%) stated that they cared for another person (aside from parenting or childcare).

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan has already acknowledged that working flexibly is important to account for both changing expectations of work and work-life balance, and to support people with parental and/or caring responsibilities. But, while some NHS trusts have already introduced initiatives to support carers, and a range of resources have been provided, more can be done.

Our previous work on people with parental responsibilities in surgery made several recommendations to support people with responsibilities outside of work, such as flexible working and training, and improved culture, but more is required across the NHS as a whole. Individual NHS organisations should also look at their own staff survey data to understand more about their workforce who have caring responsibilities, and target support accordingly. And, although the NHS Staff Survey does not cover people working in social care, it is likely that a large proportion of that workforce is also juggling caring responsibilities with their professional roles.

Getting this right for England’s biggest employer would be a significant step towards improving the experiences of people balancing caring and employment. 

Notes on the data

• The figure used to show the proportion of carers in the general population (8.9%) is the age-standardised rate based on the 2021 Census.
• ‘Mental Health and Learning Disability Trusts’ include ‘Mental Health & Learning Disability and Mental Health, Learning Disability & Community Trusts'.
• We use the term ‘carer’ in this piece to refer to people who provide unpaid support to another person due to for example, ill health, disability or frailty. Both NHS staff in the NHS Staff Survey and individuals in the 2021 Census were asked the same question: “Do you look after, or give any help or support to family members, friends, neighbours or others because of either: long term physical or mental ill health / disability, or problems related to old age?” It does not include caring for children, which in the NHS Staff Survey is covered by a separate question: “Do you have any children aged from 0 to 17 living at home with you, or who you have regular caring responsibility for?”
• The NHS Staff Survey 2023 results were based on 707,460 responses from 268 NHS organisations, which represented a 48% response rate.
• The 2021 Census and NHS Staff Survey use different age bands. In order to align the results from the Census with those of the NHS Staff Survey by age, we calculated a weighted average using the closest age bands (e.g. 16-20 in the Staff Survey and 05-17, 18-24 in the Census and 51-65 in the Staff Survey and 50-54, 55-59, 60-64 in the Census).
• Further details on the results of the 2021 Census and how it compares to previous years are available here.