Employers for Carers (EfC) hosted a webinar on Tuesday 22 October, to explore the case for introducing caring as the 10^th protected characteristic.

Helen Walker, Chief Executive of Carers UK, opened the webinar by sharing why Carers UK are campaigning to see caring the 10th protected characteristic as a core part of its Vision 2025 strategy. She noted that the law, in relation to direct discrimination by association, is not widely known or understood and that Carers UK’s research revealed carers often feel invisible, overlooked, and discriminated against in society and the workplace. Helen asserted that including caring along with the nine existing protected characteristics would have a huge impact for the millions of people juggling work with care by removing any uncertainties on carers legal rights against discrimination and empowering carers with greater visibility in the law.

Emily Holzhausen CBE, Director of Policy and Public Affairs, followed by presenting the findings from Carers UK’s research report. She echoed Helen’s observations that the law is confusing and lacks a duty to promote equality for carers. Emily noted that the report covers a range of situations where carers experienced discrimination and harassment, including accessing goods and services, but the clearest body of evidence was found when looking at carers in employment. One statistic she shared from the research was that 22% of carers experienced discrimination in the workplace. On a more positive note, she spoke to a growing practice of making caring a protected characteristic within local authorities, the NHS and organisations, which is an important step to gaining carers this legal right. Finally, Emily shared that including caring as a protected characteristic makes caring more visible and ensures fair treatment of carers in the workplace.

Two EfC member organisations, Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL) and Surrey Heartlands ICB (SH), then presented what caring, when treated as a protected characteristic, looks like in practice.

Anne Power (CNWL) began with sharing the journey to recognise caring as a protected characteristic at the Trust, beginning with Board level pledges and defined equality priorities back in 2016 and the support of an Executive Sponsor. She noted that there are a range of ways that caring is embedded into CNWL’s workplace practices, including onboarding and continued training, divisional EDI steering groups, and trust-wide opportunities for carers to engage and feedback to the trust. Data collection is also an intrinsic part of the commitment to creating a positive culture at CNWL, which Anne noted is monitored through carer passport applications, flexible work appeals and annual NHS staff surveys.

Kim Jacobs (SH) presented next, and shared how the ICB went from not including unpaid carers in any EDI activities or policy reviews, to adopting caring as a protected characteristic. She mentioned key milestones in this journey, including creating an unpaid carer marker on their workforce system, establishing a staff Carers Network and mandatory line manager training to raise awareness around caring in the workplace. SH now promotes open conversations around caring responsibilities in the workplace, offers paid carers leave and aligns recruitment practices to support the equal treatment of carers among the other protected characteristics. As a result of making caring visible in the workplace, Kim shared that SH has seen an increase in number of individuals disclosing their status as a carer and staff uptake of paid carers leave.

The webinar then opened the floor to allow participants to ask questions to the speakers on topics including, accessing workplace carer policies as an undisclosed carer, engaging senior leadership and HR teams and collecting and reporting on carer data.