How many carers in australia

There are more than , young carers in Australia. If you are a young carer, you may be able to get special help and support. The definition for carer under the Australian Government Carer Recognition Act is someone who gives care and support to a relative or friend who:.

You are not considered to be a carer if you are employed to look after someone, if you work as a volunteer for an organisation, or if you are doing work experience as part of a course.

Carers provide support and help with daily activities such as preparing meals, bathing, dressing, going to the toilet, moving around and taking medicine. Some people provide care all the time, while others do so only occasionally. Some carers look after people who are mostly independent but might need help with tasks such as banking, transport, shopping or housework.

You might not be the only person who cares for someone and you might not provide care every day. Every situation is different. You may be looking after someone who is living with disability, mental illness or dementia. You might be young or old. You might be caring full-time or also working. Meet some of the people who provide care.

Describe yourself Dolly: I kind of don't really think about me much, you know. No I wouldn't really know how to describe myself. Angelina: I'm a mother, I'm a home cook and I love my family. Adnan: Loud, fun, energetic. Rachel: Very organised. When did you start caring? The virus can have a more serious impact on older people, those who have pre-existing medical conditions and people with disability—groups of people who often rely on informal carers.

To reduce the risk of infection, different levels of formal restrictions have been in place, and these may have affected informal carers differently. For example, people who do not live with the person they look after may have had these arrangements disrupted. In addition, people may have voluntarily limited contact with either the person they care for, or with the wider community to reduce the risk of infecting the person they care for.

People who provide informal care are not paid for the care they provide, although some receive income support payments from the Australian Government. This is a smaller subgroup of all informal carers—people whose caring duties are significant enough to limit their ability to engage in paid work.

The means-tested Carer Payment provides income support for people who care for someone who has considerable needs due to disability or ill health, making them unable to support themselves through substantial paid employment. The number of informal carers receiving financial assistance through Services Australia Carer Payments increased by 3.

A proportion of people who qualify for Carer Payments may not be receiving financial assistance through the Carer Payment if they are receiving other financial assistance, such as parenting, disability, unemployment or age pension payments. This increase may be related to employment changes people experienced during the COVID pandemic, for example someone previously working part-time and caring for a family member may have become eligible to receive the Carer Payment due to loss of income. While the COVID pandemic has resulted in large increases in the number of income support recipients overall, changes attributed to the pandemic should be approached with caution and acknowledgement of the long-term trends.

People may also, or instead, receive the Carer Allowance, which is a smaller supplementary payment for carers who provide daily care and attention at home for a person with a disability, severe medical condition or who is frail and aged.

The Carer Allowance may be paid in addition to income support payments. At 25 September , over , people received this allowance compared with over , at 27 September DSS The Carer Gateway is a program that aims to acknowledge and support the work of unpaid carers.

For more information on the Carer Gateway and supporting carers in Australia, see Department of Social Services Supporting Carers and Disability support pension and carer payment. This section presents selected data for Carer Payment recipients the carer and the people they provided care to the care receiver.

As at 25 September , there were almost , care receivers people receiving care who qualify their carer for carer payment DSS The bar chart shows the distribution by age group under 16, then in year groups to age 65 and over for people who received the Carer Payment or for people who received care from Carer Payment recipients selected via a button.

The chart shows that people who received care from Carer Payment recipients were more likely to be in the youngest age group under 16 or in the oldest age group 65 and over , with Carer Payment recipients more likely to be in the middle age groups. The nature of care a person requires can affect the demands of the caring role. For example, someone with a physical disability may require a different kind or level of care compared with someone with a psychological disability.

For example:. The vertical bar chart shows the distribution of medical conditions in each age group under 16, 16—20, 21—24, then in year groups to age 65 and over for people who received care from Carer Payment recipients.

The chart shows that the proportion of care receivers who had a psychological or psychiatric condition was highest in the youngest age group and decreased steadily as age increased, while the proportion who had physical conditions affecting the musculoskeletal system or connective tissue was lowest in the youngest age group and increased steadily as age increased.

In addition to income support payments, services are available to support carers in other ways. Examples include meeting their needs in study and work, and supporting them and the person they care for through counselling, help at home, transport or equipment.

HREOC has undertaken considerable work in this area, particularly in relation to people with disability and the right to employment. The report of the National Inquiry into Employment and Disability, WORKability II , produced a series of recommendations aimed at better enabling people with disability to secure and retain employment.

As discussed in Chapter 3, human rights law is developing to better address issues such as the needs of older people and the rights of people with disability. Along with the domestic anti-discrimination laws, Australia has an obligation to prevent and eliminate discrimination in employment that occurs on the basis of age and disability under the ILO Convention No Concerning Discrimination in respect of Employment and Occupation.

In addition to this protection, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities , 13 which was adopted by the United Nations UN General Assembly in December , prohibits all discrimination on the basis of disability. The United Nations have also adopted a number of non-binding principles which recognise the rights and needs of older people.

Relevantly, it recognises "the crucial importance of families, intergenerational interdependence, solidarity and reciprocity" and "the provision of health care, support and social protection for older persons". Care services in Australia must be seen within the context of broader community goals that allow all individuals to participate as fully as possible in the economic, social and intellectual life of their community. The principle of shared work - valued care encompasses proper remuneration for paid care work and the sharing of the broader costs of informal care by government as well as individuals.

More than one in eight Australians 2. Almost half a million of these people are primary carers. Three quarters of carers are of workforce age. Carers are more likely to be unemployed or not participating in paid work than those who are not carers. Primary carers have a significantly lower labour force participation rate at only 39 per cent. It is notable that the rate of full time work among primary carers in less than half of the general population at only 19 per cent with non primary carers 37 per cent also lower than the Australian average of 42 per cent.

There is evidence that some carers would return to the workforce but for their caring obligations, with around a third 36 per cent of primary carers indicating a desire to return to work, particularly part time. Support services aimed specifically at carers have increased significantly in recent years. The Australian Government now funds the Commonwealth Carer Resource Centres which provide advice, counselling and referral for carers and Commonwealth Carer Respite Centres which provide carers with information about a range of respite options and assistance to obtain respite.

These services can help maintain family relationships, provide necessary breaks as well as supporting time together, relieve carer burnout and associated physical and mental health consequences and assist people with illness or disability to have an improved quality of life and better participate in their community. While Governments have also developed a range of initiatives in recent times to support working carers of older people and people with disability, 25 this is a key area in which further specific research and policy development is required.

Changes have also been made to the financial assistance provided to carers in recent years through the Carer Payment and Carer Allowance with the aim of assisting carers to better combine paid work and caring. These include extending the number of hours that carers may spend in employment, voluntary work or training from 10 to 25 per week without affecting their Carer Payment and increasing the number of days that carers can spend away from caring up to 63 for recipients of Carer Payment or Allowance.

It is a welcome move that will hopefully provide carers with some new options in alternative care. However as it is for respite care and appears to be for a limited number of hours, it would not be expected to be a main source of alternative formal care. Rather, regular permanent arrangements are needed over extended hours.

Flexible respite care and information services are required to enable carers to participate in work and family life. The Commonwealth government has a responsibility to provide sufficient support for carers wanting to combine work and family.

Better support is needed to assist carers to manage their caring responsibilities and in particular to combine paid work and caring. That State and Territory governments, with cooperation with the Australian Government, develop state specific internet based resources modelled on the NSW Governments Working Carers Support Gateway in addition to an advisory service linked to existing infrastructure to inform working carers about their rights and provide greater information about support services and entitlements.

Some types of care produce present challenges for carers. The community based organisation Palliative Care Australia has stressed that carers of people with a terminal illness often experience difficulties in maintaining employment and are forced to give up work and rely on government assistance. Support for working carers is important at the workplace level from both management and colleagues.

HREOC was told about a variety of different ways in which workplaces could be more supportive of carers. A number of carers talked about the benefits of formal or informal debriefing, counselling or professional supervision at work. One carer, who worked at a human service organisation where staff had stressful jobs, had access to counselling that was paid for by her employer.

As she didnt feel she needed it she was able to trade it in for massages, which were 'a great stress relief. Others felt that they didnt want work troubles to intrude on their already difficult home lives. They made arrangements to debrief on their day at work with colleagues, friends or supervisors so they could leave their work stresses at the front door. If these provisions were available to all staff it would greatly assist working carers. There is a range of ways workplaces can be flexible, depend[ing] on the level of care required For example, care for a frail older family member with a degree of independence can be assisted by acceptance of the need for personal monitoring or support phone calls, extended lunch hour to allow meal preparation, carer leave for appointments, reduced working hours or flexitime, or work at home.

Our working carers are concerned that their current rights, for example to take time off and make it up later, be protected. Other family-friendly provisions that are identified as important include being able to use the telephone at work, take career breaks when leave runs out, and being able to take extra paid leave for carer training and support, not just to provide care this was particularly the case for a group of Aboriginal working carers.

Working carers wanted greater promotion of family-friendly provisions and counselling around their needs so they would not feel pressure to resign because of caring responsibilities. While many of the issues that carers identify are common and experienced by many people across the spectrum of Australian families, as with parents with child care responsibilities, some groups of carers experience particular difficulties and challenges.

These specific groups identified to HREOC in submissions and consultations include men with caring responsibilities, 35 carers with disability, grandparent carers, Indigenous carers, young carers and carers from CALD backgrounds. The prevailing social culture dominates the workplace re-enforcing the 'women as carers, men as bread winners' stereotype further limiting male carers from accessing workplace flexibility provisions.

A number of studies have identified the issues for male carers as distinct from carers more broadly. Slightly less than half of all carers are men, while men account for slightly less than a third of primary carers.

Male carers also have a different profile to female carers in relation to their age and the people for whom they are caring. Men are more likely to be the carer of their spouse, less likely to be the carer of a parent or child and tend to be older than women carers. I believe a 'changed mindset' towards ageing and the needs of the aged ought to apply to both men and women and also employers.

The stress on a family caring for an aged parent is traumatic, it usually now comes at a time when the family carer is not as active, fit or healthy as they were when younger. Currently it comes at a time when men and women are nearing the end of their working life or looking forward to a relaxed retirement, after they have brought up their own family and finished their working life.

Caring can also divide families. Crucially, there should be an expectation that caring for children, the aged and infirm, for friends and relatives in times of need, is the responsibility of men and women equally. As long as this responsibility falls primarily to women they are vulnerable to being discriminated against at work, and constrained in their employment choices and opportunities. A recent study on male carers conducted by Carers NSW identifies that men have different patterns of caring to women - male carers continue to do more of the traditionally male tasks such as home maintenance, gardening and heavy lifting, with more personal care, assistance and communication carried out by women.

It is interesting to note that men report doing as much meal preparation and more housework than women, although the study suggest that this may perhaps be partly explained by women not reporting as caring tasks those activities which they have always carried out in the home.

These findings, based on the ABS Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers, are also reflected in FACSIA data on recipients of Carer Allowance - this payment is available to carers providing high level personal care, is not income tested and only 18 per cent of recipients are men. The Carers NSW study found that many of the issues facing men and women carers were the same, such as the impact of caring on physical and mental health, feeling able to cope with changes that have occurred in their lives, having sufficient contact with other people especially other carers , the usefulness of formal services in particular carer support services and respite services and the impact of community attitudes.

However, the study also found that a number of men were socially isolated, had inadequate social support, were using destructive coping mechanisms particularly alcohol or had poor mental health. Carers groups, particularly ones specifically targeted towards men, were seen as being a very beneficial form of support for male carers. In my experience and discussions with other men I have found there to be pressure exerted upon men who have wished to change their employment arrangements to make them more family friendly.

There seems to be some suspicion if you are a man and wish to work part time to balance your other responsibilities. The Working Carers Support Gateway argued that carers cannot always access time off during the day to provide care for older relatives.

A male carer consulted by the Working Carers Support Gateway noted:. The women in the office get to take time off if they need to. But my boss would have to be fined by an inspector, like for Workcover, before he would give time off to the blokes driving the vans. As noted in previous chapters, people with disability who are also carers, frequently women, face particular difficulties accessing the support they need to undertake combined paid work and care roles.

However, it is important to acknowledge that the inequities and barriers that exist for women in the workplace are exacerbated for women with disability. Like other carers, the majority of carers with disability are women.

Despite the diversity of people with disability there is a lack of research on people with disability except in relation to welfare, health care and disability support services. In addition, much of the data are not disaggregated in terms of gender, race or other demographic factors.