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7.1. Overview and Key Messages
All of us will have our lives touched by caring at some point: 3 in 5 of us will be carers and many of us will also need care in our lifetime (George, 2001). Carers are the mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, siblings, spouses, friends and neighbours who provide unpaid care, caring at home, picking up prescriptions, changing dressings, providing much needed emotional support and much more, and often neglecting their own health and wellbeing needs. Carers are vital to those they care for and to the foundation of the health and social care system.
Around 1 in 8 people in West Wales, many of them young people, are providing unpaid care with a significant proportion providing between 20 to 50+ hours of unpaid care per week.
The provision of unpaid care is becoming increasingly common as the population ages, with an expectation that the demand for care provided by spouses and adult children will more than double over the next thirty years (See for example Pickard, 2008).
Based on a national calculation conducted by carers UK and Sheffield University in 2015 (Buckner and Yeandle, 2015), the cost of replacing unpaid care in West Wales, can be estimated at £924m. This exceeds the NHS annual budget for the region which is almost £727m (Hywel Dda University Health Board 2016a).
7.2. Demographics and Trends
Census data suggests that within West Wales there are more than 47,000 unpaid carers representing 12.5% of residents (ONS, 2011):
• Carmarthenshirehasthehighestproportion(13.2%)ofunpaidcarersinWestWales, the 3rd highest in Wales
• Pembrokeshire has the second highest proportion (12.4%) in West Wales, the 11th highest in Wales
• CeredigionhasthelowestproportioninWestWales(8,603),the4thlowestinWales. In comparison with the other 21 authorities across Wales however, the percentage change (8.7%) between 2001 and 2011 of carers in Ceredigion was the second highest across all of Wales (joint second with Powys)
• The age range that provided the greatest share of care were women aged 50-64, with more than a quarter of all women in this age group providing some level of unpaid care
• Thepercentageofpeopleprovidingover50hoursofcareperweekriseswithage, for both males and females
• TheBlackandMinorityEthnic(BME)populationofWestWalesis2.12%ofourtotal population or 8,105 people, considerably lower than the Welsh average of 4.4%. The rates of caring amongst the BME population are significantly lower than the
West Wales Population Assessment March 2017 Carers