The event sought to highlight the huge responsibility that carers face, and discuss how they might be better supported.
Setting the context, Emily Holzhausen from Carers UK explained that caring was: “something we will all do at some point.”
The UK has huge amount of carers already, she said, with a further 6,000 people every day taking on a caring responsibility. Three million of these people are of working age, while others are elderly carers.
The issue of coping with additional caring duties while working was a central theme of the event, with a number of panel members raising concerns about the financial implications of caring.
Ms Holzhausen pointed out that women have a 50/50 chance of becoming carers during their working life, affecting their careers and income, whereas for men it is 50/50 that they will become carers by retirement age.
“On the whole we have got to be better at talking about carers in the workplace,” she said, adding that Carers UK are calling for 5 to 10 days annual care leave to be introduced.
Also discussed was the importance of the quality of care offered, with 70% of those who had witnessed poor quality care finding their employment suffering as a result, largely due to lack of flexible leave.
According to the latest figures, by 2017 the number of people needing care will have outstripped the number of people who are in a position to deliver that care for relatives, while at the same time £4.6 billion has been taken out of the social care budget.
Baroness Claire Tyler, whose Private Member’s Bill in the House of Lords proposes 5 days of statutory paid care leave, said that the subject was now a “universal issue, not on the fringe”.
She added that official figures now show that 3 in 5 people in the UK will be carers in their lives and 1 in 5 people will find that their work is affected by caring responsibilities. Currently, 2.3 million have already given up work due to their caring responsibilities.
Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Tyler praised the most recent Care Bill, but added that because it put the onus on carers to identify themselves as such, many do not come forward.
Most carers tend to be people in their 50s and 60s and “largely women,” she said. Baroness Tyler called this group the “sandwich generation” as many have children still living with them at home or grandchildren to care for, as well as elderly parents. This can adversely impact on their careers, at a stage when many have achieved senior positions.
These were the reasons, she explained, for her bringing forward her Private Member’s Bill, saying: “If we can get this in statute it will be a real advance.”
Ian Peters Director of Consumer Facing Strategy at British Gas and Chair of Employers for Carers said he had “always been a great supporter of the carers agenda”.
British Gas was a founding member of Employers for Carers which now has over 90 member organisations covering 1.5 employees across Britain and involving at least 120,000 working carers.
There was “a good business case” to take a lead in this area, he said.
When an employee is away from work it costs between 100 to 150% of their salary to compensate for their absence.
Mr Peters explained that British Gas had set up a network of carers within their company and that it now had just under 1,000 members in 16 different locations.
This is part of a wider package offered by British Gas of one month matched care leave for employees who need to look after family members or close friends. The average use of this per year is three to four days so it is clearly not being over-used, he said.
Schemes such as this can save vast sums of money for businesses in recruitment costs, which is why Mr Peters encouraged other employers, especially larger companies, to introduce this sort of support.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Stoneham said this was a classic example of “where we need to do much more cross departmental thinking” and congratulated Mr Peters and British Gas for implementing these changes.
He added that one of the most important things an employer could do was “keep people in the workplace” and within the labour market.
He suggested that flexibility was the key to delivering these sort of reforms for employees, but conceded that it would be more difficult for smaller businesses.