‘Really tangible benefits’ of digital support for unpaid care are here, now

Madeleine Starr, Director of Business and Innovation at Carers UK explains how digital can help the UK’s 8.8 million unpaid carers - including the 5 million who juggle care with work It is not even about developing anything new, she says: ‘what I really want to see in the 2020s is the technologies that we already have out there that work so well embedded in frontline practice.’ She means technologies like activity monitoring that provide a 24/7 service that, combined with care visits, can be targeted, because the carer can use a dashboard to understand what a person’s experience has been overnight - eg if they have been up several times and lost sleep - so that they can tailor their next visit. Starr goes on to describe how Carers UK supports individual carers but also local authorities, who have duties to support carers under the Care Act, but who have in fact been carring out declining numbers of carer assessments since. Carers UK have developed a standalone platform for local authorities and employer subscribers that packages a range of information products with its own-developed app ‘Jointly’ that helps families manage and share caring responsibilities.