It’s time to create a Caring Cymru for unpaid carers

Rob Simkins, Carers Wales

Across Wales, hundreds of thousands of people work tirelessly every day helping to look after family members, friends and neighbours. They do this without pay, sometimes alongside paid employment and in many cases at great sacrifice to their health and wellbeing and their own hopes and dreams.

These are the nearly 500,000 unpaid carers whose caring roles prop up our health and social care services and underpin the fabric of our communities, supporting hundreds of thousands of people to live healthier, happier and more independent lives. As well as these hard to measure impacts, research indicates that to replace the care provided by Wales’s unpaid carers would cost over £10 billion per year. This is a conservative estimate.

If unpaid carers across Wales were unwilling or unable to provide care, the impact it would have on our systems and society would be unimaginable.

So, who cares for the carers?

For years, despite their fundamental importance to services and society, unpaid carers have been left to get on with little to no support for their caring role. This is despite duties often being all-consuming, with many having to give up careers, being forced into loneliness and isolation, pushed into poverty and, in some cases, suffering injury and trauma as a direct result of their caring role. For many carers whose caring roles are particularly intense and heavy, every day is a battle to try and seek the support they need and deserve, whilst balancing competing needs for one or more people who rely on them for vital support.

Whoever forms the next Welsh Government must use May’s election as an opportunity to draw a line under this story, and ensure unpaid carers are prioritised adequately across all relevant areas of Government and policy. As fundamental as unpaid care is to the health and wellbeing of our nation, I would bet the house that – if mentioned at all in the run-in to the May Senedd elections – unpaid care will be given a tiny fraction of the attention received by NHS waiting lists, the economy and other policy areas.

Not just talk, but real action

As well as marking one of the most consequential elections in Wales’s history, 2026 also marks a decade since the main piece of law relating to unpaid carers came into force. The Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act – on paper, a positive and progressive piece of legislation giving rights to carers and setting clear duties as to what support carers should receive. In reality, carers’ experiences fall far short of their rights under Welsh law.

Successive reports from Carers Wales, the Ombudsman and even the Government’s own review of the Act show serious failures in its implementation – with the tangible real world impact of carers going without the support to which they are entitled.

Until unpaid care is embedded across Government (local, devolved and reserved) services and within society, the same issues will persist.

We explored how better join-up between unpaid care policy and other key areas of Government can and should look in the first ever Care Policy Scorecard for Wales which we launched with colleagues in Oxfam Cymru and the Bevan Foundation in 2025.

Are you a carer?

Some people reading this article may well be – for the first time – considering that they themselves may be unpaid carers. If this has made you think, then you can find out more about caring and how to get help here. Many carers will be looking after somebody for years before they are identified as carers, often having to self-ID and seek support, having been missed by professionals across government services whilst they’ve been busy supporting the people for whom they care.

We’ve worked with carers to produce a full manifesto of asks for the next Government, but one of the single biggest things that would make a difference would be a greater awareness of carers across Government, services, and the media.

Unpaid carers hold Wales together, yet their contribution is still too often overlooked, under‑resourced and taken for granted. The laws, strategies and commitments already exist—what’s missing is the determination to implement them fully and fairly. Care is not a side issue: it is the engine that keeps our communities, our services and our economy moving. The next Welsh Government must make unpaid care impossible to ignore, embedding it across every department, every policy, every budget. Warm words will not sustain carers any longer. Only action will. And action must start now, before the weight they carry becomes impossible to bear.

Amidst the struggle, there is hope: with decisive action, Wales can become a place where carers are valued, supported and able to thrive alongside the people they love.

(Carers Wales works to make life better for unpaid carers by providing expert information, advice and practical support. They connect carers and build supportive communities, ensuring no one has to care alone, while also using their insight and innovation to improve services. They campaign for lasting change so that carers are properly recognised, valued and supported across Wales.)