Know what you are entitled to at work
- Carer's Leave: unpaid leave for employees with caring responsibilities in England, Scotland and Wales.
- The right to request flexible working from your first day of employment.
- Time off for dependants in an emergency, which is separate and immediate.
- Many employers have a carers' policy or network that goes beyond the legal minimum — ask HR rather than assuming.
Cover the working day, not the whole day
Most working carers have evenings and weekends broadly under control. Focus everything on the hours you cannot be reached: a mid-morning prompt, a lunchtime prompt, a mid-afternoon one.
Scheduled reminders do this without you needing to step out of a meeting, and a confirmation tells you it landed.
Tell someone at work
Carers who tell their manager tend to fare considerably better than those who quietly absorb it, because unexplained lateness looks like unreliability while an explained pattern can be planned around.
You do not need to share every detail. 'I care for my mother and may occasionally need to take a call' is enough.
Protect one thing that is yours
Work plus caring squeezes out everything else first, and that is precisely what leads to burnout. Keep one commitment a week that belongs to neither.
The wider picture
5.0 million
people in England and Wales provide unpaid care, according to the 2021 Census.
a legal right
every unpaid carer in England can ask their council for a carer's assessment, whatever their income or savings.
Source: NHS