Seventeen Thousand Unasked

What the evidence says

The Survey of Adult Carers in England is the source for the carer wellbeing measures used in local planning. Its eligible population is defined as unpaid carers aged 18 or over who are known to the council. A woman who has never had an assessment, never claimed a benefit and never described herself as a carer is not in the sampling frame at all.

Wandsworth unpaid carers, and the route into the statistics

Unpaid carers, Census 202117,705

Caring more than 20 hours a week8,138

Known to the council, and so eligible to be surveyednot published locally

The third bar is drawn indicatively and is not a measured value. We could not obtain Wandsworth's survey sample size. Nationally, the survey's entire eligible population across all councils was 322,105 in 2021–22, against a census count of unpaid carers running to millions.

Wandsworth’s Health & Care Plan cites 11.1% of adult carers having as much social contact as they would like, described as the lowest rate in London. It is a real figure from a real source and it is likely to come up in any funding conversation about carers in this borough. Three things should travel with it.

Research on Pakistani carers in the UK reports higher levels of social isolation than among White British carers, alongside lower engagement with mainstream support services. The barriers identified include reliance on informal support within the family, gaps in awareness of what exists, limited English, conflicts between services and religious or cultural expectations, and the cost of travelling to appointments.

Work on dementia care in South Asian communities finds most care provided at home by family, with low uptake of post-diagnostic support and care planning. The pattern is consistent across studies. Care is being provided at high intensity, by families, largely outside any service that would record it.

Wandsworth’s own needs assessment finds Asian residents the most likely group to be economically inactive, and the most likely to be inactive specifically because they are looking after home or family. Census 2021 records 4.6% of the borough’s residents as economically inactive for that reason.

What we could not verify

• Wandsworth’s survey sample size is not something we could obtain. Any use of the 11.1% figure should carry that.
• None of the borough-level carer data is broken down by both sex and ethnicity. The position of Muslim women and women from ethnic minority communities specifically, within Wandsworth’s carer population, is inferred from national research rather than measured here.
• The employment figure is dated. The Women and Equalities Committee found 44% of economically inactive Muslim women were inactive because they were looking after the home, against a 16% national average for women. That work is from 2016 and we could not verify it against a current source.

Why this matters for funding

The usual difficulty with unmet-need claims is that they are unfalsifiable. This one has the opposite property.

• The gap between the two numbers is the case. A census count of 17,705 against a support system that only measures those who found it is not a claim requiring a survey to establish. It follows from how the two datasets are built.
• Reaching these women is not an add-on, it is the only route. Services that wait for referral cannot reach a population defined by not having referred itself. A room women already come to for other reasons can.
• It converts cleanly into an outcome worth counting. How many women at Communi-TEA had never heard of a carer’s assessment, and how many went on to request one. That is a count of people moved from outside the system to inside it, which is precisely the gap described above.

One caution on that last measure. A count of assessment requests is an output. It is not evidence that anyone’s isolation improved, and a bid should not let the two blur.

Sources

Census figures are full population counts. Survey figures are marked with their sampling frame, because in this case the sampling frame is the finding.

Full source list

1. 17,705 unpaid carers in Wandsworth, 8,138 providing 20+ hours a week Census 2021, Office for National Statistics. Full population count, 6.7% of residents aged five and over.
2. Survey sampling frame Survey of Adult Carers in England, NHS England Digital. Eligible population defined as unpaid carers aged 18 or over known to the council, caring for someone aged 18 or over. National eligible population 322,105 in 2021–22, from which 133,980 were sampled and 43,525 responded.
3. 30.0% having as much social contact as they would like Survey of Adult Carers in England 2023–24, up from 28.0% in 2021–22.
4. 11.1% in Wandsworth, 2019/20 Cited in the Wandsworth Health & Care Plan 2025–27, NHS South West London Integrated Care Board. Sample size not published in that document.
5. Isolation and service engagement among Pakistani carers Qualitative research on culturally relevant social prescribing for Pakistani carers in the UK, published in a peer-reviewed journal, 2024.
6. Dementia care and post-diagnostic support in South Asian communities Systematic review of qualitative studies on post-diagnostic support and care planning for people with dementia from South Asian backgrounds.
7. Economic inactivity by ethnicity and reason Wandsworth Joint Strategic Needs Assessment, and Census 2021 results for Wandsworth, Insight and Analytics Team, April 2023.
8. 44% of economically inactive Muslim women looking after the home Employment opportunities for Muslims in the UK, House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee, 2016. Flagged above as dated.
9. Carer's assessment as a legal right Care Act 2014, section 10.