Overview

Unpaid care is a critical element in the care and support of people in older age, yet there is evidence of significant demographic and socio-economic changes - such as increasing longevity, changing family structures and dynamics, shifting patterns of female (and male) labour force participation and changing attitudes to caring - that may affect current and future provision of unpaid care and hence pressure on the public purse.

The true extent of unpaid care is unknown as questions on informal care provision, such as those in the recent Census, may fail to capture the breadth and diversity of informal care activities. The aim of this project is to develop a better understanding of the scale and nature of unpaid caring activities, how these interact with other paid and unpaid activities such as work and leisure, and how patterns of time use may be changing as society changes. Ultimately, we aim to inform better ways of collecting survey data on unpaid care that is capable of genuinely informing policy and capacity planning, and this can directly inform inter alia, the design of the new Scottish Longitudinal Study of Ageing.

Closely informed by the views and experiences of unpaid carers themselves, we are investigating the dynamics of unpaid care for older people by collecting and analysing time-use data and by developing improved methods of understanding the nature of unpaid care in survey research. This will in turn inform the development of policies which can effectively support the provision of unpaid care, helping to counteract current demographic changes which may reduce it.

The research, which brings together colleagues from Scotland and Southampton, involves both qualitative research in the form of interviews with unpaid carers in care partnerships with older people and quantitative analysis of large-scale surveys such as the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.