Gerostats

Unpaid care across Tyne and Wear

The hidden week being carried in plain sight.

Across Newcastle, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland, Census 2021 shows at least 2.65 million unpaid care-hours every week. That is the lower bound, counted cautiously from the hours people reported. It is not a service rota. It is people getting someone washed, dressed, fed, medicated, watched over, taken to appointments, settled at night, and held together again the next day.

Some places are not just poorer. They are doing more care, with less money, poorer health, and less margin for anything to go wrong.

2.65m minimum unpaid care-hours each week Census 2021, residents aged 5 and over

The map

Every circle is a named area. Bigger and darker means more unpaid care.

Start with the animated walkthrough, then use the map to explore the named areas yourself. Each circle is a ward, built from the small-area Census data underneath. The figure is minimum unpaid care-hours per 100 residents aged 5 and over each week.

Animated walkthrough

Watch the week accumulate.

This Remotion story steps through the care clock, the rising ward burden, high and low care places, and the precarious pattern where unpaid care, deprivation, poor health and disability sit together.

D2.6 average deprivation decile in the highest care-burden fifth of wards
9.2% average bad or very bad health in that highest burden fifth

The Census table measures residents providing unpaid care. It does not identify whether the person receiving care is aged 65 and over, so this is not labelled as older-person care only.

Tyne and Wear ward-level unpaid care burden. Circles show named wards. Background areas show the small-area data underneath.

The hidden week

At least 2.65 million hours every week.

This is the minimum visible week of unpaid care across Tyne and Wear.

Bigger/darker circle: higher ward burden
Smaller/lighter circle: lower ward burden
Background: small-area pattern
Pulse: highest named areas

What this shows

Unpaid care is not evenly shared.

The map is not saying that care is a problem. Care is love, duty, reciprocity, family, friendship and survival. The problem is what happens when the need for care, the work of care, poor health and deprivation all concentrate in the same places.

In the most deprived fifth of local neighbourhoods here, the minimum unpaid-care burden is about 293 hours per 100 residents aged 5 and over each week. In the least deprived fifth, it is about 187 hours. That is not a small difference in a week. It is a different social load.

The public health question is blunt.

What happens to a place when thousands of people are quietly absorbing work that would otherwise break the formal care system? What happens when many of those carers are also living in communities already carrying more disability, poorer health, and fewer resources?

This should not sit in the background as “family responsibility”. It is part of the health of a place. It is infrastructure, even when it happens in kitchens, bedrooms, buses, clinics, pharmacies and broken sleep.

Method

A conservative measure of hidden labour.

The care-hours metric uses Census 2021 unpaid-care bands at LSOA level. To avoid overclaiming, each band is counted at its lower bound: 1 hour for 1-9 hours, 10 for 10-19, 20 for 20-34, 35 for 35-49, and 50 for 50+. This means the total is a minimum estimate, not a maximum. The public map aggregates those small areas to wards so the burden can be read through named local areas.

Read the technical note

Sources

Author

Andrew Kingston

I am a statistical epidemiologist from the North East. Gerostats is where I can write personally about public health statistics, local places and the hidden labour that official numbers can make visible.

drandrewkingston@gmail.com