Unpaid carers are saving Northern Ireland’s health service £5.8 billion in care costs each year, new research has suggested.
The report from Carers NI said the unpaid care for disabled or sick family members would cost health trusts a combined £16 million every day if it was being delivered by staff.
The charity said the figure had risen by more than 40% in the last decade and is significantly higher than the equivalent increase in England and Wales.
It said that unpaid carers in Northern Ireland are saving the equivalent of 80% of the Department of Health’s entire day-to-day spending budget.
Campaigners have called for the immediate return of the Stormont government to reform services.
Craig Harrison, public affairs manager for Carers NI, said: “These figures lay bare the extraordinary contribution that our unpaid carers are making to Northern Ireland’s health system every year.
“If our GP surgeries are already too full, social care caseloads too long and A&E departments too crowded, how much worse would it be if our unpaid carers disappeared even for a few days?
“The system would completely fall apart without them.”
He added: “Local carers are going years between one break and the next, living with devastating levels of mental ill-health and running themselves into the ground as they keep the health service afloat.
“Their devotion to their loved ones has been exploited for too long, and the deeply frustrating thing is that while health leaders know what the solutions are to relieve the totally unsustainable pressure facing carers, they’re completely hamstrung by the lack of a health minister.
“We need to get our priorities straight, restore the political institutions and begin dealing with the massive challenges facing Northern Ireland’s carer population.”
Louise Vance, 43, from Belfast provides unpaid care for her mother, who suffers from chronic heart and lung conditions and memory loss following a brain haemorrhage.
She said: “As an unpaid carer I feel neither cared for nor respected by the health system.
“When my mum’s condition deteriorates in any way, the extra care burden is always pushed on to me.”
She added: “Our health trust’s limited toolbox of services and money leaves me in a constant state of high anxiety and stress, scared for both my mum’s physical and mental health and my own.
“The little support I do get is pathetic and does nothing to alleviate the pressure I am under on a daily basis.
“Carers like me are unsupported, uncared for, dismissed and expected to just keep on supporting our loved ones under totally unsustainable conditions until we burn out.”
According to the research carried out at the ESRC Centre for Care using 2021 Census data, the annual amount of money saved by unpaid carers is greatest in the Northern Health and Social Care Trust (£1.3 billion), followed by Belfast Trust (£1.1 billion), Southern Trust (£1 billion), South Eastern Trust (£985m) and the Western Trust (£800m).
The report argues that Northern Ireland’s ageing population, rising prevalence of disability and long-term health conditions, and lack of capacity in domiciliary care services are behind the growing pressure on unpaid carers.
It calls for a legal right to breaks from caring, development of a new carers strategy and expanded provision of community care packages across health trusts.
