The Carer’s Leave Act 2023 became law in April 2024 and provided family carers with an entitlement to unpaid carer’s leave from the first day of work with their employer. Carers Leave is for up to one week of leave every 12 months, with a ‘week’ being the length of time normally worked over a 7 day period. The leave can be taken as one ‘block, or you can take individual days or half days throughout the year.
So what has the impact of this new law been on working family carers? To find out Carers UK and Employers for Carers recently undertook a study to find out if organisations had implemented any additional elements to their carer’s leave policy, and the impact the Act has had on other forms of carer support
A summary of the key findings can be found below;
- 37% of responding organisations thought that the Act had increased the understanding and awareness of unpaid carers in the workplace.
- After the implementation of the Act, 23% of organisations saw an increased uptake of their carers network/support group showing the key role this provision has for carers coming forward and accessing support.
- 21% of organisations saw an increase in carers coming forward to access carer’s leave.
- 51% of organisations have a specific dedicated carer’s leave policy, compared to 23% before the Acts introduction
- 44% of organisations have form of paid carer’s leave with this varying between one and ten days. Just over a quarter of these have introduce this policy since the Act.
- Of the organisations who said they had some form of paid carer’s leave in place before the Act nearly 15% no longer have this in place reverting to the statutory minimum of unpaid carers leave
- 88% of responding organisations said that they had not experienced any challenges with the implementation of the Act. Of those that did the unpaid element of the Act was identified as a barrier to accessing carer’s leave.
The full report can be found here
