This week is Carers Week. Carers Week was created to celebrate and recognise the vital contribution made by the UK’s 6.5 million carers.
What is a carer?
A carer is someone aged 18 or over who helps another person, usually a family member or friend, in daily life. Carers help others who would otherwise not manage without that support.
Carers can provide lots of different types of unpaid support for the people that they care for, depending on that person’s needs. It might be that a carer cooks all meals, does the household cleaning and gardening, shops for essentials, drives, or looks after pets.
Often, people become carers through circumstances that are outside of their control, and they want to help look after the people they care about. Carers are not given a job description before they start as they are not doing paid or voluntary work. This means that carers rarely receive any training to help them learn the skills needed to take on new responsibilities.
However, it’s not just people over 18 who can be carers. Young carers are children and young people (18 and under) whose lives are affected in some way by caring for another person or helping someone else to provide care.
Why is Carers Week important?
In 2022, Carers Week is between the 6th – 12th of June.
Carers Week raises awareness of caring and the challenges that unpaid carers face. It’s an opportunity to recognise the contribution of unpaid carers and help people with caring responsibilities to identify as carers so they are able to access much-needed support.
Activities during Carers Week
During Carers Week 2022 (6th – 12th June), there are a bunch of activities that are going on around the UK, both in-person and online, to support unpaid carers. Check out what’s going on near you.
In addition to those activities, you could also:
- Spread the word about Carers Week on social media using the #CarersWeek hashtag
- Get in touch with local politicians and ask them to support Carers Week
- Find out what support is out there for carers, and share it with people who may be struggling
- Add Your Voice for Carers Week, to help make caring more visible
Related Information
Visit TheSprout’s Information page for Young Carers.
Find support for carers in Cardiff on the Dewis Cymru website.