Dudley Joins Early Pilot for National Survey of Unpaid Carers
Dudley Council is among the first local authorities helping pilot a national Survey of Carers designed to capture the experiences of unpaid carers who are too often missing from routine service data. The survey opens on 14 October and closes on 14 December, giving carers across the borough a window to describe the realities of caring, the strain it places on daily life, and the support they need from adult social care systems that are already under pressure.
Unpaid care sits at the intersection of family life, disability, chronic illness, mental health, older age, and substance misuse. In practice, it is a hidden form of health and social care labour: often unregistered, frequently uncompensated, and rarely measured with the same consistency as formal service use. When carers are not visible in administrative records, their needs can be missed as well. That gap can leave support plans incomplete, respite provision underused, and local decision-making built on partial information rather than lived reality.
Why the Survey Matters for Adult Social Care Planning
The survey has been commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care and is being conducted by researchers at the University of Birmingham as part of the Centre for Care. Its purpose is straightforward and clinically relevant: build a more accurate picture of unpaid carers in England, including people not currently known to local services. Dudley is taking part alongside Birmingham, Coventry, Sandwell, Solihull and Shropshire in the West Midlands, as well as Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield in South Yorkshire.
The need for better data is not abstract. Carers frequently absorb tasks that would otherwise fall to health and social care systems: medication support, mobility assistance, supervision, communication advocacy, personal care, and day-to-day coordination with professionals. When those responsibilities intensify, carers themselves can experience exhaustion, anxiety, musculoskeletal strain, sleep disruption, and social isolation. A survey that captures not only who is caring, but also the type and intensity of care, can help services identify where pressure is building before breakdown occurs.
One sentence captures the policy problem clearly: many carers remain invisible until crisis forces them into view.
Reaching Carers Outside Existing Registers
Professor Matt Bennett of the Centre for Care described the survey as an opportunity for unpaid carers to have their voices heard, and the design reflects that aim. The project was co-designed with carers, local authorities, government bodies and charities, with new questions and improved ways of reaching people whose caring roles may not be recorded anywhere else. That matters because routine service data usually captures people already connected to formal support, while those coping alone or navigating fragmented care arrangements are more likely to fall through the gaps.
The survey’s emphasis on inclusion is especially relevant for people whose caring role is informal, intermittent, or shared across households. Some carers may not identify with the label at all, even while providing substantial support every week. Others may be balancing paid work, childcare, and care for a partner, parent, child, neighbour, or friend. Without a tool that actively seeks them out, these experiences remain undercounted, and the resulting service model risks underestimating demand for carers’ assessments, advice, short breaks, training, and emotional support.
Dudley’s Role in the West Midlands Pilot
Councillor Andrea Goddard, cabinet member for adult social care and public health, said Dudley Council has a key role in the national pilot and encouraged anyone in the borough who provides unpaid care to take part. The message is plainly strategic: local participation will shape the evidence base used to inform future adult social care support, both locally and nationally.
Dudley’s inclusion in the pilot reflects the wider challenge facing councils across England. Adult social care systems increasingly rely on family and community carers to sustain people at home, delay residential placement, and support independence. Yet those same systems can struggle to understand how much unpaid care is being delivered, how burdens are distributed, and which groups are least likely to ask for help. A borough-level contribution to a national survey offers one route to better visibility, especially when paired with local outreach that reaches residents who do not typically engage with council services.
The survey is anonymous, and no identifiable information will be published. For participation, the public is directed to the Survey of Carers website.
Better Data Could Change How Support Is Delivered
In public health terms, the value of this survey lies in the quality of the denominator. Councils and national planners cannot design effective support if they do not know how many carers are present, what conditions they support, or what kind of burden they carry. A stronger evidence base can help local authorities estimate demand for respite, peer support, practical advice, emergency planning, and targeted outreach to carers facing the highest levels of strain.
The biological and social consequence of prolonged caregiving is cumulative. Repeated physical lifting, disrupted sleep, ongoing vigilance, and chronic stress do not remain neatly contained within the caring role; they spill into the carer’s own health. Over time, that can affect employment, mental wellbeing, and the ability to continue in the role safely. Data that captures those pressures can inform interventions earlier, before preventable deterioration pushes carers into crisis and the people they support into avoidable hospital or care-home pathways.
What the Pilot Can and Cannot Solve
A survey alone will not close the gap between need and provision, and it will not resolve the chronic mismatch between demand for care and the capacity of formal services. It can, however, sharpen the picture that decision-makers rely on. If enough unpaid carers participate, the findings may expose who is missing from existing records, which support gaps are most common, and where local systems should concentrate limited resources.
The anonymous design also has a practical benefit: it may encourage participation from people who have not previously engaged with statutory services or who are hesitant to disclose their caring role. For a population that is often overburdened and under-recognised, that lower barrier to entry may be the difference between silence and usable evidence. Dudley’s participation in the pilot places the borough inside a national effort to make unpaid caring more visible to the systems built around it, even as the deeper question remains whether the resulting evidence will be matched by sustained service capacity.