Overview

Providing informal care can have significant negative effects for carers in terms of reducing psychological and physical health outcomes, constraining social participation and limiting ability to remain in formal employment. Developing policies to support informal carers is therefore an important policy objective to enable carers to continue caring for as long as they wish to do so and to ensure that the future availability of unpaid care is sufficient to meet demand. There are different types of policy measures addressed directly to carers that have been implemented across Europe to support provision of informal care.