43,460 carers answered. A quarter say caring made them ill
What happened
On 24 September 2026, the Department of Health and Social Care published the Survey of Adult Carers in England for 2025 to 2026. This survey is run every two years by councils that provide or pay for adult social care. It asks unpaid carers aged 18 and over what life is really like. These are people who look after an adult who gets social care — a parent, a partner, a grown-up child, a neighbour. The scale of it matters. Councils sent the questionnaire to 153,455 carers. Of those, 43,460 filled it in and sent it back. That is a response rate of 28.3%. Very few surveys of carers anywhere in the country are this big. One finding stands out. Around a quarter of carers — 25.7% — said they had developed a health condition of their own because of caring. That figure has not moved since the last survey in 2023 to 2024. The survey also found that 34.7% of carers spend 100 hours or more a week looking after or helping the person they care for. That is more than a full-time job, twice over. This figure did at least fall compared with two years ago. The largest single group of carers was aged 55 to 64, at 25.4%. Most of the people being cared for were older: 54.8% were aged 75 or over.
Why this matters
It is easy to read a number like 25.7% and move on. So picture it instead. In a room of a hundred unpaid carers, twenty-six of them have picked up a health problem of their own while looking after somebody else. The survey goes further and asks how caring feels day to day. The answers are blunt: - 79.4% said caring left them feeling tired - 67.1% had disturbed sleep - 64.8% said they felt stress Then there is company. Only 31.0% of carers said they had as much social contact as they wanted. Half — 50.6% — said they did not have enough. Around 18.4% were socially isolated. And 13.8% said they felt lonely often or always. None of those social figures improved since 2023 to 2024. They stayed still. There is a practical reason to care about all this beyond kindness. Unpaid carers hold up a huge part of the health and care system. When a carer becomes unwell, two people often need help instead of one. Keeping carers well is not a soft extra. It is one of the cheapest things the country can do.
What the evidence actually says
It is worth being precise, because the survey is not all bad news. Some things did get better, by small amounts: - 14.2% of carers said they were extremely satisfied with the support or services they got, up from 13.1% in 2023 to 2024. For comparison, 4.2% were extremely dissatisfied. - 26.2% said they always felt involved or consulted in discussions about the support given to the person they care for, up from 25.0%. - Finding information got a little easier. 10.3% found it very easy and 33.0% fairly easy to find advice about support, services or benefits in the last 12 months — both up on two years ago. There is a detail inside the involvement figure worth pulling out. When you leave out the carers who did not know any discussions were happening at all, 38.1% said they always felt involved and 8.0% said they never did. On money, 53.9% said caring had not caused them any financial difficulty in the last year. Around 9.9% said it had caused difficulty 'a lot'. Both figures were unchanged. So the honest summary is this: satisfaction and involvement crept up slightly. Health, loneliness and money stood still. Nothing in the survey shows a sudden collapse, and nothing shows a breakthrough either. One caution about the numbers. This is a survey, and the results for individual councils vary in how precise they are. The published methodology notes that 65 local authorities had a margin of error under 5%, while 42 had a margin of error above 6%. The national picture is solid. Comparing one council with another needs more care.
Qurexa perspective
We deliver prescriptions and support people with taking their medicines, so we speak to carers most days. The survey matches what we hear. A large part of caring is admin. Ringing the surgery. Chasing a repeat prescription. Working out whether the pharmacy has the item in stock. Getting there and back. None of it is the hard emotional work of caring, but it eats the hours, and the hours are exactly what carers do not have. That is the honest connection to what we do. Having medicines brought to the door removes some trips and some phone calls. It does not fix loneliness or replace a break. But when 34.7% of carers are giving 100 hours or more a week, giving back even an hour or two is not trivial. We would rather say that plainly than overclaim. If you are caring for someone and the medicines side of it has become a weekly scramble, that is a problem worth handing to somebody else.
Practical advice
If you look after someone, here are the steps most worth taking. They are ordinary, and that is the point. 1. Ask for a carer's assessment. If you provide unpaid care, you have a right to ask your council for an assessment of your own needs under the Care Act 2014. It is separate from any assessment of the person you care for. You do not need their permission to ask for yours. 2. Tell your GP surgery you are a carer. Most practices keep a carers register. Being on it can mean flu and other vaccines are offered, and that staff understand why you are calling about someone else. 3. Check whether you can claim Carer's Allowance or Carer's Credit. Many people who qualify never apply. It is worth ten minutes on GOV.UK to find out. 4. Deal with the sleep and the tiredness as real health issues. Two-thirds of carers in this survey reported disturbed sleep. If that is you, it is worth a GP appointment in its own right — not something to mention in passing at the end. 5. Simplify the medicines. Ask your pharmacist for a Medicines Use Review or a chat about what the person you care for is taking. Pill organisers, matched repeat dates and delivery all cut the number of separate jobs in a week. 6. Take the social contact seriously. Half of carers said they did not get enough. Carers UK and local carers' centres run groups and phone lines. Being around other carers is one of the few things that reliably helps.
What to know
The Survey of Adult Carers in England for 2025 to 2026 is one of the largest pieces of evidence we have about unpaid caring, and 43,460 carers took the trouble to fill it in. The headline is that caring still costs carers their own health. A quarter said they had developed a health condition because of it, and that has not changed in two years. Tiredness, broken sleep and stress are the norm, not the exception. Half of carers do not get enough social contact. Against that, satisfaction with services and feeling involved in decisions both nudged upwards, and finding information got slightly easier. Small gains, but real ones. If you are caring for someone: a carer's assessment, your GP's carers register, and a check on Carer's Allowance are the three things most likely to be worth your time this week. Sources: Department of Health and Social Care, 'Survey of adult carers in England: 2025 to 2026 report', 24 September 2026, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/survey-of-adult-carers-in-england-2025-to-2026-report ; Department of Health and Social Care, 'Survey of adult carers in England 2025 to 2026: commentary', 24 September 2026, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/survey-of-adult-carers-in-england-2025-to-2026-report/survey-of-adult-carers-in-england-2025-to-2026-commentary ; Department of Health and Social Care, 'Survey of adult carers in England, 2025 to 2026: methodology', 24 September 2026, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/survey-of-adult-carers-in-england-2025-to-2026-report/survey-of-adult-carers-in-england-2025-to-2026-methodology This article is for general information and does not replace advice from a doctor, pharmacist or other qualified healthcare professional. If you are worried about your own health or the health of someone you care for, please speak to your GP or pharmacist.
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