The Care Gap
This is not
This is not
an edge case.
Care is often treated as a private family issue. But the practical, emotional and economic consequences reach homes, workplaces, communities and public services every day.
The Care Gap
The invisible coordination load that sits between all three.
No shared layer joins these worlds together, so families are left to hold the gap themselves.
The scale behind the story
The hidden care economy is already holding the system together.
These figures do not describe a small group of “other people”. They describe a reality that will touch families, workforces and communities across the UK.
5.8m
UK Census 2021/22 combined estimate
people provide unpaid care across the UK
Care for a parent, partner, child, friend or relative is often being provided outside formal services.
£162bn
Carers UK, 2023 estimate
estimated annual value of unpaid care
Families are providing support that reduces pressure on health and social-care systems.
1 in 7
Employers for Carers / Carers UK estimate
employees are estimated to be juggling paid work and unpaid care
For many, the care day starts when the working day ends.
600
Carers UK estimate, reported 2019 onward
people a day are estimated to leave paid work to care
Not always in one dramatic moment. Often gradually, as the invisible load becomes too heavy.
The figures are drawn from publicly available sources and cited in the source notes. They are used to show scale and context, not to make a forecast.
Care at work
The impact rarely arrives in one dramatic moment.
It often looks like an employee carrying two jobs: their paid role, and the growing responsibility of keeping someone they love safe and supported.
600/day
People are estimated to leave work to care.
That is why support cannot only begin at the point of absence, attrition or crisis. By then, the coordination load has usually been building for a long time.
01
It starts with divided attention
Appointments, prescription requests and difficult calls sit alongside meetings, deadlines and commutes.
02
It becomes an invisible coordination load
One person often holds the updates, questions, documents and next steps for everyone else.
03
It affects retention before it appears in HR data
Reduced hours, missed opportunities and eventual exits can come after a long period of strain.
04
It is why the family layer matters
Supporting a carer at work also means strengthening the network that depends on them outside it.
What is missing
A coordinated family layer before crisis.
Healthcare is increasingly digitised. But the people surrounding a person are still too often left to coordinate through memory, messages and goodwill alone.
Understand
A clearer starting point when something begins to change, before families are overwhelmed by jargon or urgency.
Prepare
More confidence for conversations, observations, appointments and decisions that often arrive without guidance.
Coordinate
A safer shared place for the people doing the care work, without assuming every family is simple or harmonious.
Protect
Support that keeps consent, boundaries, dignity and the person’s own voice at the centre of the journey.
Sources and context
What we know from published evidence.
The figures on this page are drawn from publicly available UK census data, studies and published reports. They help us understand the scale and consequences of unpaid care as we research the feasibility of FACEhyb. Any future discovery, usability testing or pilot findings will be presented separately as FACEhyb-generated evidence.
Unpaid carers in the UK
The 5.8m estimate reflects combined 2021/22 Census reporting across the UK. Census questions capture people providing unpaid help or support because of long-term physical or mental ill-health, disability, or problems related to old age.
Office for National Statistics, Census 2021 · Scotland’s Census 2022 · Northern Ireland Census
Economic value of unpaid care
£162bn is the widely cited Carers UK estimate for the annual economic value of unpaid care in the UK. This estimate is useful for showing scale, but it cannot capture the full emotional or relational value of care.
Care and employment
The 1 in 7 estimate is commonly used in employer-carer research to describe the scale of unpaid caring responsibilities in the workforce. The “600 people a day” estimate refers to people leaving paid work because of caring responsibilities.
How FACEhyb will use evidence
FACEhyb will clearly distinguish between publicly available statistics, founder discovery insights and any future pilot evidence. No one source is treated as a complete picture of every family or care journey.
The opportunity
Support should begin before the point of crisis.
FACEhyb is being built to make the family network around care easier to navigate, safer to share and more centred on the person.