Until recently, unpaid care provided by relatives, neighbours and friends –informal care – had been overlooked or taken for granted by policy-makers in the context of long-term care provided to dependent older people. A certain amount of informal care is nevertheless essential in filling the gaps of formal care services, supplementing them or assuring that care is provided in certain critical transition phases (e.g. after discharge from hospital). Care provided by relatives and friends is often the only fallback option when care services are not available. Driven by concerns over the fiscal sustainability of long-term care services and by more self-conscious and demanding carers’ movements in many countries (e.g. UK), informal care has been brought into the limelight.

Still,despite this newfound interest, information available on informal carers is still relatively scarce. This is in part due to the nature of the subject itself as informal care is often provided by relatives and thus falls within the sphere of private family life. In addition, methodological issues make it difficult for informal care to be properly addressed in general population or
household surveys. In view of this, what do we know about who provides informal care and
who benefits from it? What differences (if any) are found among countries? And what policies are set in place to support informal carers? The aim of this Policy Brief is to contribute to answering some of these questions. It does so by using available data from national and international sources, as well as qualitative information gathered in our recent publication Facts and Figures on Long-term Care – Europe and North America.

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