Carers Trust is to focus its post Covid-19 recovery funding on supporting underrepresented beneficiaries, including those from LGBTQ+ and ethnic minority communities.

Young and male carers have also traditionally received little support in their caring role and need help, according to the charity.

The focus on underrepresented communities follows funding to the charity through the government’s Covid-19 Support Fund.

It has pledged to use £3.45m of funding to boost support for more than 13,500 unpaid family carers through its Making Carers Count campaign. This will be used to support 25 local carer services to deliver targeted support until the end of March 2024.

This has an emphasis on supporting those that “have, up to now, encountered barriers to accessing support” because of their gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity.

Trisha Thompson, the charity’s head of grants and programmes, said: “For too long, far too many unpaid family carers have struggled, unrecognised and unsupported, to provide essential care and support for their loved ones.

“This investment will be a game-changer for the lives of 13,500 carers and all those they care for.

“It means that Carers Trust and front-line carers services will have far more capacity to identify, support and involve carers from those under-represented communities so they can access the appropriate carer support they so desperately need if they are to carry on caring for their loved ones, both now and long after the Covid-19 pandemic.”

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