Scotland's Carers, 2026: Main Report

Introduction

Unpaid carers are people who provide care and support to family members, other relatives, friends and neighbours because of either long-term physical or mental ill-health; disability; problems related to old age; substance misuse or other conditions, outside of anything done as part of paid employment or formal volunteering.

For the purposes of this report, the term “carer” refers to those providing unpaid care. Some carers provide intensive caring roles while others provide fewer hours of care. Some are life-long carers, while others may provide care for shorter periods of time. Anybody can become a carer at any time in their life and sometimes for more than one person at a time. Carers can be any age from young children to very elderly people.

This report brings together research and statistical analysis to show the diverse profile of carers in Scotland, including:

• estimates of the number of carers in Scotland
• who are the carers, by age and sex
• hours of care provided
• length of time they have been caring

Future reports

This report updates Scotland’s Carers (2015) and is the first in a series, intended to provide a useful source of information for carers’ organisations, policy makers, local authorities and anyone who is a carer or knows someone who is a carer. Future short, more concise reports will focus on specific topics – such as impacts of caring roles including on health and wellbeing; young carers; and support provided to carers – and will be made available in due course.

Data sources used

To understand Scotland’s Carers, this report has brought together research and further statistical analysis from two sources – the Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) combined 2019-2023 data, and Scotland’s Census 2022 (see section 2.3 and Annex 2 for further explanation of these data sources).

Although both of these sources (the SHeS and the census) define carers in the same way, both have their strengths and their limitations. Because the census provides a population-level count, it provides data on large numbers of carers, which can be useful for robust and detailed analysis. However, because it relies on people self-identifying as carers and there is a tendency for people to not recognise themselves as carers (see section 1), it may undercount carers.

Conversely, the SHeS question on unpaid caring was introduced with a strong health and social care focus as part of a detailed health survey, following a block of questions about long-term conditions. As such, people may be more likely to be thinking more about health and care issues when responding to the question in the SHeS. Further, all adults respond to the SHeS individually, rather than one household member responding on behalf of others, as in the census.

Therefore, on balance we have selected the SHeS as the principal source for this report (see section 2.3 and Annex 1 for more detail). However, the census data provides useful context and background, and as such, we have included analysis of data from the census to accompany insights drawn from the SHeS. More information on these data sources and their methodologies can be found in Annex 2.

How data are presented

Census figures presented in charts are derived from unrounded data to reflect the precision of the underlying estimates. In contrast, charts presenting SHeS data use rounded values for reporting consistency with the national SHeS publications. As a result, when rounded categories are shown in charts, their totals may not sum exactly to the overall figure.

Rounded figures are presented for both the SHeS and the census throughout the body of this report. This means that small differences can occur between the rounded values described in the text and the unrounded census estimates shown in charts.

All estimates from the SHeS presented in this report are central estimates that have associated 95% confidence intervals, which provide a way of quantifying uncertainty. More information on confidence intervals can be found in Annex 2.

We have mostly left the confidence intervals associated with SHeS estimates out of this report, to improve readability. However, we have included some where we thought it was important to aid understanding of the results. The confidence intervals associated with the SHeS estimates calculated for this report are available in the supplementary tables.

All differences between SHeS estimates that are presented in this report are statistically significant at the 95% level, unless stated otherwise. Details of the approach to significance testing of SHeS data can be found in Annex 2.

An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland

These statistics are official statistics. Official statistics are statistics that are produced by crown bodies, those acting on behalf of crown bodies, or those specified in statutory orders, as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

More information about Scottish Government statistics is available on the Scottish Government website.