- Conference
- 2003 National Women's Conference
- Date
- 18 October 2002
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Statistics show that the majority of carers are women. The results of The General Household Survey 1995 (completed five yearly), the latest published in 1998 gave the following statistics:
1)One adult in 8 is a carer and one in 6 households (16%) contains a carer;
2)There are 5.7 million carers overall in Great Britain;
3)1.7 million people devote at least 20 hours per week to caring;
4)3.3 million of the carers are women;
5)The peak age for caring is 45-64;
6)18% of carers are looking after more than one person;
7)Half are caring for a spouse, one fifth are caring for parents or in-laws;
8)24% look after their dependants for a period of at least 10 years with 23% caring between 5 and 10 years;
9)One third of carers look after someone in another household;
10)Of carers devoting at least 20 hours a week to caring over 60% are women;
11)Over one third of all carers report that no-one else helped them care.
A recent case and changes in the benefit system highlighted the dilemma of many women members. The case, a woman discontinuing her employment to care for her badly disabled partner, unable to work with benefit not reflecting the individual’s cost of living or the value of her care. State benefits payable to the carers in the position, Invalid Care Allowance (ICA) is £42.45 for 35 hours of care Sunday to Saturday. The Government states that in between hours of care the carer can earn no more than £72 per week. This was increased in April from £50 per week. Women over 65 years on a full state pension cannot claim ICA neither can anyone in full-time education of 21 hours or more a week.
Last Autumn the Government announced a carers’ package, two of those measures were implemented in April this year, however, the remaining measures for allowing carers over 65 to claim ICA and extending ICA for 8 weeks after the death of the disabled person requires legislative changes. Our carers deserve more.
We therefore instruct the National Women’s Committee to raise these concerns with the National Executive Council.