Who is a carer?

A carer is anyone who cares, unpaid, for a family member or friend who needs help and support due to illness, disability, a mental health condition, or an addiction.

If you give significant support to another person, irrespective of whether you live with that person or not, you are considered a carer, even if the person you care for is unable or unwilling to acknowledge your involvement, and even if you have never thought of yourself as a carer before.

The tasks below are examples of what carers may do to help the person they care for:

• Helping with day-to-day domestic tasks forms a large part of caring roles. This may include food shopping, helping them keep their home tidy, and helping them do their laundry.
• Supporting a person when they're outside their home can be part of being a carer, too. This may include helping them get out and about, helping them travel to appointments, and helping them spend time with family or friends.
• Sometimes caring involves doing things for people that they would normally do for themselves. This may include helping them to wash, helping them to get dressed, and helping them to take their medicine.
• Caring can also involve helping with or taking control of a person's finances. This may include helping them pay bills, helping organise their finances, and helping them with budgeting.
• Emotional support is also a big part of the support a carer provides. This may include sitting with them to keep them company, watching over them when they can't be left alone or visiting, ringing, or texting them to check if they're feeling okay.

Is it obvious when you're a carer?

Being someone's carer probably only describes part of your relationship with them. You may also be a parent, partner, sister, brother, child, friend, or other family member. This relationship can be just as (or more) important to you. You may also have other caring roles as well, for example, as a parent to other children.

You might even be caring for someone you have a difficult or distant relationship with. Either way, once unpaid carers have identified themselves as being in a caring role, many wish they had sought help sooner.

Supporting others can often be rewarding, but it can also be mentally and physically exhausting. The time you spend caring can really vary too; some people look after someone for just a short time, while others find themselves caring for someone 24 hours a day for a long period of time.