Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate his Department has made of the number of carers under the age of 18 in (a) the UK, (b) England, (c) Scotland, (d) Wales and (e) Northern Ireland.

An estimate of the number of carers under the age of 18 in England and Wales is collected by the Office of National Statistics through census data. Information on the number of carers under 18 in Scotland and Northern Ireland is a devolved matter.

According to the 2011 census, there are almost 166,000 young carers aged 5 to 17 in England and Wales, although estimates from other studies using different methodologies or question wording to identify carers are much higher.

In January 2017, the Department for Education published the omnibus survey report ‘The lives of young carers in England’: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-lives-of-young-carers-in-england. This was a significant piece of research carried out by the Department in partnership with Loughborough University looking to improve understanding of the numbers and needs of young carers and their families.

The Department of Education and the Department of Health, Social Care have commissioned the Carers Trust to undertake a review of best practice in identifying young carers. This work is currently ongoing but by its conclusion should give us new insights into how schools, health and other providers can best achieve this in practice.