Carers Week 2025

Carers Week runs from 9-15th June 2025.

PiPA believes that a truly world class performing arts is inclusive of all talents and circumstances. That includes unpaid carers. 

 

A carer is someone who provides unpaid care and support to a family member or friend who has a disability, illness, mental health condition, addiction, or who needs extra help as they grow older.

Many people don’t consider themselves to be carers, despite having caring responsibilities.

 

This year, the theme of Carers Week is "Caring About Equality". It highlights the inequality faced by unpaid carers. At PiPA, we see how being a carer or having caring responsibilities impacts performing arts professionals’ ability to work. 

Having caring responsibilities and having a career in the performing arts should not be mutually exclusive, but many people do not have the support they need to continue to work when they have caring responsibilities. Luckily, there are many ways that we as an industry can support carers. That includes having open and empathetic conversations about being a carer, flexible working patterns and becoming a Charter Partner with PiPA.

This Carers Week we invite our partners, friends and everyone in the performing arts sector (not just carers themselves), to consider how we can support carers in their workplace and beyond – be it by using our Care Inclusive Access Rider, understanding Carers Leave, or supporting and sharing petitions that call on the Government to protect and support carers in the UK.

To mark Carers Week 2025, PiPA has three offerings to support and empower our carer community in the performing arts.

1) Free download of our Care Inclusive Access Rider

This is a free booklet that anyone with a caring responsibility can use to communicate aspects of their identity they may want their employer to be aware of, and access support they might need.

It also enables the employer, together with the individual, to identify strategies and potential adjustments, creating a supportive and inclusive working environment. Download it.

2) Free download of our Carers Leave information

The Carer's Leave Act 2024, which came into effect on April 6, 2024, grants employees in England, Wales, and Scotland the right to one week of unpaid carer's leave per year.

This leave is for employees providing or arranging care for someone with a long-term care need.

The leave can be taken flexibly, in half or full days, and is available from the first day of employment. Download our overview.

3) The Government welfare reform proposals - ways to act

We have a lot of concern regarding aspects of the Government’s welfare reform proposals. The changes will see an unprecedented cut to benefits for unpaid carers and a significant reduction in household income for disabled people and their families. 

• We want to highlight our Charter Partner Graeae and their response to the impact of recent policy change. In it they highlight concern for 'DWP cutting carers allowance for 150,000 claimants. Many of our employees and freelancers survive by living at home or living with a carer.' If you would like more information about how the changes in Access to Work are impacting people with disabilities in the sector, Disablility Arts Online and Cathy Waller Company have an excellent and clear explainer available here. 
   
• Please read and consider signing the Carers UK Open letter.
   
• Read and consider signing the Open Letter to Lisa Nandy (DCMS) and Liz Kendall (DWP):Proposals in the "Pathways to Work" Green Paper.