Almost one in 10 people in Ireland are carers and many of these are under major strain, a new report from the Central Statistics Office has shown (CSO).

According to the report, 8% of adults - 10% of women and 6% of men - provide unpaid help or assistance to someone. This amounts to around 350,000 people. Almost half of these carers are aged between 45 and 64 and two in three are women. Almost half care for someone in their own household

One in three carers work full-time, while almost one in three are ‘economically inactive', but of working age.

Four in 10 are the sole carer for the person they look after.

The report noted that almost half of carers spend more than 15 hours per week providing care, while one in five spend more than 57 hours per week.

"As might be expected, carers living in the same household as the person they looked after spent a far greater amount of time on caring than carers who cared for someone in another household," the report said.

Of those who are caring for a person in the same household, one-third have been carrying out this job for 10 years or more.

The person most likely to be cared for is a parent/parent-in-law (43%) or a child (19%). Just over one in 10 carers are caring for a partner.

"Just over a third of carers were caring for someone who required care due to old age and a further third were caring for someone with a physical disability only. One in 10 carers were caring for someone with a mental disability only and 13% were caring for someone with both a physical and mental difficulty," the report noted.

The type of care given ranges from keeping people company to helping with physical care and giving medicines.

Meanwhile, the report also looked at the impact of caring on the carer. Not surprisingly, two in three said their life had been impacted by their caring responsibilities.

"The most frequently reported impacts were that caring is confining (44%) and that there has had to be family adjustment (43%). As the number of hours caring per week increase so does the proportion of carers reporting an effect on their health or lifestyle," it pointed out.

It noted that carers who live in the same household as the person they care for are ‘much more likely' to report that their health or lifestyle had been affected (85% versus 55% of those who cared for people in other households).

"The physical demands of caring for someone in the same household are evident in that half said that their sleep was disturbed, 41% said it was a physical strain and 38% reported feeling completely overwhelmed.

"In regard to the emotional impacts of caring for someone in the same household, 42% reported needing to make emotional adjustments, that some of the behaviour is upsetting (35%) or that it is upsetting to see the changes in the person they care for (39%). Just over a third of carers who look after someone in the same household said they had had to make work adjustments or that caring was a financial strain (35%)," the report said.

Overall, just 13% of carers are in receipt of financial support, the most common of which is the Carers' Allowance.

Source: www.irishhealth.com