Caring for someone

In particular, we provide information on the following areas:

• Foster carers and shared lives carers
• Tax and benefits for carers
• Pension and National Insurance for carers
• Issues facing paid care workers

We look at the rules and concessions around Council Tax and carers in our Other tax issues section.

Unpaid carers may be interested to read the 2016 submission that we made to the Department of Health's consultation on improving support. (An ‘unpaid carer’ is someone who provides unpaid help and support to family or friends who are ill, disabled or who just need some extra support.)

In our response we said that more could and should be done to support the financial position of unpaid carers, across a range of topics within our remit including income tax, council tax, National Insurance, tax credits and National Minimum Wage.

The original consultation can be found on the Department of Health website.

Our submission, which details our recommendations, is available here.

We understand that we will see the launch of a cross-Government ‘carers strategy’ in 2018 and we will post any updates to this website.  

For a simpler overview, why not check out our easy-to-digest factsheet?