A carer is anyone who cares, unpaid, for a friend or family member who due to illness, disability, a mental health problem or an addiction cannot cope without their support.
Maintaining a career whilst being an unpaid carer is tough. It’s estimated that over 600 carers a day leave their paid employment due to the strain of their caring roles. The collective value of the work provided by unpaid carers is £168bn. This is equitable with the total budget of the NHS.
We believe passionately in the importance of unpaid carers maintaining their professional careers and in turn, it’s our job to help ensure employers have the knowledge, understanding and tools to support carers in work. Find out more about how we support carers.
This page is designed to help you understand carers rights in work, and how to engage with Carers Manchester on carer awareness, signposting and partnerships.
Carers Leave Act
The Carer’s Leave Act 2023 received Royal Assent in May 2023 and the law will be enacted in 2024, by which time employers in the UK will need to be prepared to deliver changes to the way they offer support to all unpaid carers in their workforce.
What will the Carer’s Leave Act mean for employers?
This landmark new workplace law, covering employees in England, Scotland and Wales, will:
- introduce a new and flexible entitlement to one week’s unpaid leave per year for employees who are providing or arranging care for a relative or dependant
- be available from the first day of their employment
- allow employees to take the leave flexibly for planned and foreseen caring commitments
- offer the same employment protections to employees taking this leave that are associated with other forms of family related leave, meaning they will be protected from dismissal or any detriment because of having taken time off.
‘Employers for Carers’ Scheme
If you are an employer looking to support carers, Carers Manchester is a service commissioned by Manchester City Council. Whilst working in partnership, Carers Manchester can support employers to become members of the Employers for Carers scheme (CarersUK) via Manchester City Council.
Membership includes access to efcdigital.org which offers a range of resources that can help us support our staff who juggle work and care. To better understand how to support colleagues who are carers, create your own account with our membership code.
The membership code is EFCGMCA03
Your Employers for Carers membership benefits include:
- Access to your joint-branded EfC Digital (efcdigital.org) website.
- An initial consultation/diagnostic session – used to identify where we can best work with you to build upon your existing employee support or to look at a particular issue of relevance to you.
- A free ‘lunch and learn’ or similar session per year.
- Invitations to members networking events each focusing on a specific area of interest (approximately four per year) and opportunities to share your experiences by hosting and speaking at our events.
- Use of our logo on job adverts, company websites, intranets, email footers, etc.
- Support from EfC Digital for your workplace events, such as Employee Wellbeing Fairs, Diversity and Inclusion showcases and Health and Wellbeing Weeks.
More information for employers:
