Adrian has been a member of the Organisation for Responsible Businesses and one of our Responsible Business Specialists since 2013. He is a recognised, approved, and accredited provider of advice, consultancy, training and research to various social enterprises, charities, sector bodies and other organisations. His caring responsibilities for his wife and adult children have increased substantially during this time. Trying to balance operating his business alongside caring for his family when there is no external support is challenging, as is trying to ensure he provides his clients with the best possible service (when sometimes he has no choice but to cancel meetings at the last minute); and, ultimately, still earning enough money to support his family. He is determined to expose the myths of unpaid carers in the business community.

Adrian explains with some authority why this situation is bad for everyone. Bad for the carers and the people they are caring for. Bad for the businesses the carers own when the challenges of running a small business are already so high. And bad for the economy.

We are told the government’s key priority is growing the economy. If that is true, someone clearly needs to better understand the impact of unpaid care in the business community.

” I’ve been invited by ORB to write in the past about the challenges that being an unpaid carer presents to you, when you’re trying to be responsible in how you lead and manage your business[1]. But I’ve increasingly come to realise that the understating of who unpaid carers are, and who we do if for, is subject to some massive truth illusions (i.e. what most people think they understand about it, isn’t correct). And that’s important – not just for us carers, but for everyone else too, as you’ll see…

(NB: for the purposes of this post, unpaid carers refers to a person who cares for either a child or adult who has additional support needs, and not parents of young children who are able to attend school, socialise, etc without the need for specific adaptations or diagnoses).

[1] https://www.orbuk.org.uk/2024/04/18/when-being-responsible-goes-beyond-how-you-manage-your-business/ 

MYTH 1 – it’s mainly women who are carers

The data shows that men are just as likely to be a registered unpaid carer as women are – a win for gender equality, but also a challenge as this means that it’s then harder for this half of carers to be recognised and supported, because all of the stories about caring usually involve women; as a result we’re less likely to identify ourselves as such, or be taken serious if we put our hand up.

MYTH 2 – you usually care for an adult relative

There’s a growing trend of children being diagnosed with disabilities of all types, which means that they’ll need lifelong care – the days of parents welcoming/dreading the ‘empty nest’ stage of their life as their children grow up and move on/out the family home are therefore increasingly diminishing for a growing number of us, as we recognise and try to find ways to reconcile that we’ll be our child’s carer for the rest of our given life.

MYTH 3 – carers allowance supports carers ‘balance the household books.’

Less than 10% of unpaid carers are eligible to apply for carers allowance.

And because of how its designed and how our wider economy works, if you do manage to be awarded it, you’ll likely be forced into lifelong poverty as an individual and household (as in some cases being awarded carers allowance means the person you care for has their benefits reduced). There’s also a 50/50 chance you’ll be given a criminal record, because of how the system that manages it is increasingly failing.

MYTH 4 – there’s hardly any unpaid carers who are also leading their own businesses

This links with the perception that most unpaid carers are women. There are currently in excess of 500,000 unpaid carers who are also running their own enterprises, and within the next 3 years this number will more than double.

But unpaid carers who are also self-employed, or business owners, (along with carers who are also disabled themselves) are the only type of unpaid carer not recognised in legislation or policy. As a result, none of the carer support bodies nor business support services acknowledges we exist, and that while our needs as carers are shared with others in this role, there are unique circumstances and needs we have that are different.

As a lack of this recognition or support, we’re twice as likely to be in poverty than any other type of unpaid carer, and our respective enterprises will be roughly at least 20% less productive in what they deliver.

Your Values

If you’re reading this blog, then you’ve already shown that you are, or are trying to be, more responsible as a business. That means you’re committed to not only being more aware of wider communities, but also seeking to make positive contributions in impacting them.

But if the foundations of your understanding about an issue are ‘off’ (as shown above), then how can you know that what you design and try to do will actually be relevant or at all helpful?

It’s Slowing Down the Wider Economy We’re All Part Of – and Rely On

There’s a hard business case that underpins all of this – an economic argument as to why we should all try to better understand the actual realities of small business owners and leaders who are also unpaid carers.

As referenced above, these businesses are running at at least 20% below their potential because of a lack of recognition and support for them and the carers that lead them. The 500,000+ such enterprises are simply limping along in our economy, and not creating the jobs they might otherwise be, being able to invest in new technologies and markets, etc.

Add into this the 600 people who are being forced to quit their employed jobs every day, because they’re becoming carers, but can’t balance this with the (limited) support that their employer will be able to offer them – this doesn’t just mean that roughly 500 people a day are being forced to into self-employment or set up their own businesses, to be able to keep paying their rent and feed themselves, but also that existing businesses are haemorrhaging the skills and talent they rely on to keep themselves operating successfully and sustainably.

This currently all ads to at least £10,000,000,000 (that’s £10 billion) each year that’s being lost in our wider economy – trade that would have helped other businesses to grow or sustain jobs.

And within the next 3 years, this figure will have more than doubled.

It Will Negatively Impact NHS and Government Budgets

The NHS and future Government budgets will come under greater pressure (maybe to breaking point?)

Being a ‘typical’ unpaid carer already means you are up to 3 times as likely to develop complex and long term physical and mental health issues as someone who isn’t. Given that running a business is shown to increase the pressures on your same health, then not being able to be supported in either role is amplifying the future threat and costs on the public health services which are already struggling to keep up healthy as a nation.

And because our businesses are running at slower speeds, it means our personal incomes are suppressed, so we’re not able to save into pension schemes (as we’re all being encouraged to, to try and help take pressure off future government budgets when we all get to that certain age). 

In the face of such entrenched mis-understandings, discrimination in law, and extent of economic impact, it can be easy to think that there’s nothing we can do in our respective businesses that would make any difference or effect.

But history is littered with examples of small businesses who slowly and quietly challenged the norm and changed the rules for the better for everyone.

My own experiences since publicly ‘coming out’ as a sole unpaid carer (which is slightly complicated by my also currently being a sandwich carer: recognised as caring for several family members who are in different generations to each other), have given me some encouragement. I share them here in hopes that you, dear reader, may be able to help amplify them:

1) Being open about the realities, but also how systems can be flexed, to accommodate these. 

I was approached to support the delivery of a regional business growth programme, but when I clarified that my caring responsibilities meant that I wouldn’t be able to lead sessions in person, and that I may also have to reschedule agreed dates due to any arising hospital appointments for the people I care for, they withdrew the offer of work (despite my offering proactive contingences and workarounds to these).

But weeks later they came back to me to share that my conversation with them had meant that they had subsequently been able to start conversations with their own employed colleagues, whom they knew had caring responsibilities, but had never know how to broach this with them. As a result, they’d introduced new practices for their team, and in doing so realised that they could redesign the programme so re-made the offer of contract to me.

2) Get more visible and seen.

A national media body arranged a webinar to highlight the realities that leaders of social enterprises experience when they also have caring responsibilities, and challenge how workplaces can rethink their systems to better recognise and support people in such circumstances. Except the organisers of the event had only invited women who had recently become mothers to speak – and when I queried this, the host and all the speakers agreed that this was a massive blind spot on their part, which they couldn’t say why they hadn’t considered before (but now are).

3) Use the existing fit note system.

There’s plenty of support in existing government practices to support people to remain in work if their own health changes, but less so if they’re supporting the health of a family member that changes. The fit note system, if used more creatively by people, might better enable employers to start to flex and change systems so that more people can stay in work as they become unpaid carers.

4) For organisers of events – please don’t dismiss virtual and hybrid formats so quickly.

Not having these alternative ways to engage and involve businesses means that you risk losing benefits and wider impacts of the ecosystems that you’re supposed to be responsible for (as the both the Small Business Commissioner[2], and Policy team at the Bank of England[3] found, after they withdrew invitations for me to speak with them/at their events because my caring role meant I wouldn’t be able to attend in person).

[2] https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2025/05/id-like-to-apologise-to-all-my-fellow.html

[3] https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2025/06/id-like-to-apologise-to-any-business.html

Change takes time, but it’s most sustainable when it comes in small steps, so that all the wider systems and processes that our wider world relies on can keep the wheels turning.

As seen above, small changes can start to create wider/ripple impacts that will benefit all of us, regardless of where we are in the caring/being cared for equation.

But it takes courage to start to ‘out’ ourselves, and it also takes courage for others to change their beliefs and systems in light of what we may try and help them better understand.

The good news is that we all have the same amount of courage – we just need to keep it turned on for 5 minutes longer each time we see an opportunity to help better recognise and support our fellow human beings who are being discriminated against, and suffering as a result.

Further links:

https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2024/12/caring-and-screwed-how-government.html

https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2024/11/how-to-make-carers-leave-work-for-carers.html

https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2024/09/how-desperate-unpaid-carers-really-are.html

https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2024/09/how-better-support-for-carers-could.html

https://workingfamilies.org.uk/news-events/blogs/caring-aloud-adrians-story/

https://www.enterprisenation.com/learn-something/lunch-and-learn-balancing-unpaid-caring-role-managing-business/

https://www.ipse.co.uk/campaigns/other-campaigns/self-employed-unpaid-caring-responsibilities

04477 864923

www.adrianashton.co.uk

adrian.ashton2@gmail.com