Almost one in three people aged 80 and older are providing vital, unpaid care for their loved ones, despite many suffering severe health issues of their own, according to research. The figure has increased by nearly a quarter in eight years.
This invisible army of oldest and most vulnerable people in the UK provide a total of 23m hours of unpaid care a week, or 1.2bn hours of care a year, according to figures from Age UK.
“Nearly a million over 80-year-olds are gifting the government a whopping £23bn a year and it’s high time these fantastic older people got something back in return,” said Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK.
“Almost all of them willingly provide care for the person they love, typically a sick or disabled husband or wife, son or daughter, but by repeatedly failing to sort out our social care system the state is exploiting their goodwill and often leaving them to manage incredibly difficult situations alone,” she added.
Read the full story article at https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/dec/19/one-in-three-over-80s-provide-vital-unpaid-care-for-loved-ones-in-uk