The ‘obscene’ impact of poverty on unpaid carers in Northern Ireland has been criticised, with a new group of experts from across the UK formed on 18 January in a bid to root out the problem.

The new Carer Poverty Commission will spend the next 12 months gathering evidence from local households and designing recommendations for the Stormont Executive to help tackle poverty and destitution among Northern Ireland’s carer population. The Commission is led by the charity Carers NI and involves unpaid carers along with key figures from academia, the community sector, food bank providers and other poverty experts from Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. ^[1]

It is launched as recent research from Carers NI showed that nearly one in three unpaid carers in Northern Ireland were struggling to make ends meet, with one in four cutting back on essentials like food or heating to get by.

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