To celebrate Carer’s Rights Day this year, Wrexham County Borough Council hosted an event for unpaid carers and organisations that support them at Tŷ Pawb in Wrexham.
Some of our regional team went along and found it a real privilege to hear carers of all ages talking about their experiences. The stories we heard highlighted the value of the work unpaid carers do and the support they need.
We’d been asked to talk about statistics about unpaid carers. The figures that surprised us – like having fewer unpaid carers than 10 years earlier (most likely due to Covid restrictions during the 2021 Census). And the £2.3 billion it would cost in North Wales to replace unpaid care with paid care. The figures that weren’t such a surprise included people providing a lot more hours of unpaid care in total and the impact this has on carers’ health and well-being.
We shared our ‘Match the Census Statistic to the North Wales County Quiz’. The audience could raise their hands or giving a little wiggle when they heard the answer they thought was right, and they played their part brilliantly. The quiz explored the differences across North Wales such as Gwynedd having a lower proportion of unpaid carers (probably because of the students at the university being less likely to be carers) and Conwy having the second highest proportion of older people of any county in Wales.
We know the numbers don’t tell us everything, so we also asked people to let us know where the statistics didn’t match their experiences as unpaid carers. If you’d like to share your story please let us know through our survey: care and support – tell us what matters.
All the information we talked about (and more) is available on our website, see below for links.
If you need support with your caring role, there are organisations which can help including:
- North Wales Memory Support Pathway (if you’re caring for someone with dementia)
- NEWCIS (support carers in North East Wales)
- Carers Outreach Service (support carers in North West Wales)
Related pages
Research bulletins (statistics about unpaid carers in North Wales)
