Sheffield cares about carers: a regional approach to support for working carers

15th May 2026

University of Sheffield research from the Centre for Care, previous Sheffield-led ESRC investment 'Sustainable Care' and across the Faculty has highlighted that greater support is needed for employees with caring responsibilities.

A carer is a person of any age who provides unpaid care and support to a family member, friend or neighbour who is disabled, has an illness or long-term condition, or who needs extra help as they grow older.

The population providing care is dynamic. University of Sheffield research has calculated that 12,000 people in the UK become carers every day, of whom 5,300 are in employment (Petrillo et al., 2022). Between 2010 and 2020, more than 1.9 million people in paid employment became unpaid carers every year (Petrillo and Bennett, 2022), with many leaving employment earlier than the general population. The support unpaid carers need to remain in employment includes providing access to leave, flexible working and creating supportive work environments (Austin and Heyes, 2021).

The plan

The Centre for Care is developing a training package alongside Sandwich Generation Support to improve Sheffield employers' understanding of the challenges faced by employees with caring responsibilities. The training package will be underpinned by University of Sheffield, Centre for Care research, which will be offered free of charge to employers across Sheffield. This will be a small ‘proof on concept’ project delivering a total of three sessions of employee training.

The training will support employers to:

• Improve their understanding of the emotional and practical impact of balancing work and caring.
• Identify clear, practical steps to support carers in their teams and the wider organisation.
• Create a supportive and understanding workplace culture.
• Promote workplace support for working carers including carer passports, supportive management and carers networks.
• Have confidence in applying policies and using workplace flexibility.

The training would be suitable for CEO’s, line managers, team leaders, EDI leads and representatives, HR professionals.

This will have multiple benefits for employers, for example; improved recruitment and retention, reduced absenteeism, lower training costs, and increased staff morale and productivity. Employees will benefit from reduced stress, improved well-being, and increased job satisfaction.

The Offer

We would like to invite employers in Sheffield to take part in this pilot project. Participants will access training in regards to employment policies and carers employment rights whilst also understanding what action they can take to support carers in their workforce.
The training will be underpinned by research from the University of Sheffield and the Centre for Care. We aim to liaise with employers prior to the training to understand their current workplace policies and their understanding of unpaid carers who may also be balancing paid employment.

Attendees will be invited to attend one of three, face to face, three hour managers training session with up to 15 participants. In total 45 people will attend the training.

Carer ambassadors:
As a result of the training, participants may be interested in championing change in their workplace as ‘carer ambassadors’, we intend to remain in contact with the participants to assist them with subsequent steps and discussions to ensure the training is useful and has an impact. The University of Sheffield will facilitate an optional peer support group for participants to continue to share their progress in the workplace and discuss learning experiences as ‘carer ambassadors’.

Evaluation toolkit:
We will endeavour to create an evaluation toolkit for employers to measure the benefit of carer friendly policies and practices. This will support them to measure improvements in staff sickness and staff wellbeing. It will enable employers to highlight the benefit of working for their organisation and position Sheffield as a city with top quality employers.

Timeline:

Evidencing impact

The Centre for Care would like to work alongside Sandwich Generation Support to ensure that the impact and benefit of the training is captured at every opportunity.

We would like to incorporate carer champions into the training to enable participants to continue to share their learning and enable change to happen in their workplace.

The Centre for Care will offer an evaluation toolkit which will support employers to measure the impact on their business. For example: tracking staff absence, sickness etc. In addition guidance and support will be offered in relation to staff surveys whilst also measuring outcomes of the training intervention.

To register for the training session please

complete this form

Or for further information please contact Fay Benskin at the Centre for Care
f.e.benskin@sheffield.ac.uk