Unpaid carers are the backbone of adult social care. Your leadership must ensure they are identified early, assessed meaningfully, and supported consistently. Implement your Care Act duties, but also go beyond compliance. Value carers as partners in care planning, commissioning and co-production.
Offer flexible respite, tailored advice, emotional support and routes back into work or education. Collaborate with carer organisations and embed carers’ voices in decision-making. Carers carry so much—don’t let them carry it alone.
The number of people providing unpaid care continues to grow, often at personal cost. Many carers experience poorer health, reduced income, and social isolation. Your role as DASS is to build a system that respects, values, and supports them.
This means:
- Ensuring robust carer identification and assessment pathways.
- Embedding carers in governance, strategy and partnership boards.
- Commissioning services that are responsive to carers’ needs, including peer support and crisis planning.
- Promoting carer breaks, flexible employment policies and digital tools to manage care.
Carers are not just recipients of support—they are co-producers of wellbeing. But they need help to sustain their role, particularly as systems become more complex and fragmented. Work with ICSs, employers, GPs and schools to build carer-friendly communities.
Data on carers is often poor. Invest in local insight, and make sure carers are counted in your outcomes frameworks. Involve carers in service reviews and safeguarding conversations. Celebrate their contribution—and protect their rights.
Finally, ensure young carers and older carers are not overlooked. Intersectionality matters—race, gender, disability and poverty all shape the experience of caring. Take a whole-system approach, and make carers visible in every part of your work.
Supporting carers is not just good practice. It’s essential to the future of care.
More resources:
Partners in Care and Health (2024) - Making it happen together, what good care and support look like https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/making-it-happen-together-what-good-care-and-support-look
Partners in Care and Health (2023) Safeguarding roles and responsibilities: Safeguarding is everybody’s business (2023)
Safeguarding roles and responsibilities: Safeguarding is everybody’s business
Social Care Institute for Excellence: The Care Act – safeguarding adults – guidance & resources https://www.scie.org.uk/safeguarding/adults/care-act-safeguarding-adults/#:~:text=The%20Care%20Act%202014%20sets,risk%20of%20abuse%20or%20neglect.&text=arrange%20for%20an%20independent%20advocate,enquiry%20or%20review%2C%20if%20required.
Social Care Institute for Excellence (2022) Co-production: what it is and how to do it https://www.scie.org.uk/co-production/what-how/
Partners in Care and Health (2024) - Diverse by Design for Adult Social Care Executive Summary https://www.local.gov.uk/our-support/partners-care-and-health/adult-social-care-workforce/diverse-design-adult-social-care
Think Local Act Personal & ADASS (2025) A Vision for co-production (video) https://thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk/resources/a-vision-for-co-production-with-adass/
LGA & others (2024) Earlier action and support: The case for prevention in adult social care and beyond https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/earlier-action-and-support-case-prevention-adult-social-care-and-beyond
Carers UK (2025) State of Caring - The impact of caring on carers’ mental health and the need for support from social care services https://www.carersuk.org/reports/state-of-caring-the-impact-of-caring-on-carers-mental-health-and-the-need-for-support-from-social-care-services/
Partners in Care and Health (2025) Collaborative community approach to supporting the adult social care front door: strategic overview https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/collaborative-community-approach-supporting-adult-social-care-front-door-strategic