Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) identify and (b) support unpaid carers.

The white paper ‘People at the Heart of Care’ sets out how we will invest up to £25 million to improve services provided to support unpaid carers. We expect this funding will identify and test a range of new and existing interventions for unpaid carers, which could include respite and breaks and peer group and wellbeing.

To support the identification of unpaid carers, we are encouraging the use of unpaid carer markers in National Health Service electronic health records by simplifying data collection and registration. We will also introduce a new marker indicating the presence of a contingency plan, where one is available, which describes the actions to take if the carer is no longer able to provide care.