Five million people – including children as young as five – provide unpaid care to people with long-term health conditions or problems related to old age, census data for England and Wales has revealed.
With the social care system struggling with rising unmet care demand and about half a million people in England waiting for help, there has been an increase over the past decade in the proportion of people spending at least 20 hours a week on unpaid care, from 4.2% of the population to 4.7%. About 1.5 million people in England and Wales now spend more than 50 hours a week giving unpaid care.
