On 14 July 2026, the Government published its first-ever cross-departmental strategy for unpaid carers: the Unpaid Carers Action Plan, titled Recognise, Refer, Reach. It’s backed jointly by the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Business and Trade, the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions, and sets out 42 actions to identify unpaid carers earlier, connect them to support, and help them stay in work, education and good health.

Nearly 1 in 10 people in England is an unpaid carer. Most of them are balancing that role alongside a job or a family, often quietly and often at real personal cost.

At Two Generations, we’ve spent years working at exactly this intersection, where caring responsibilities meet everyday life, housing and work. Here’s what the plan means in practice for employers, and for the community organisations who work alongside carers every day.

What it means for employers

Buried in the detail is a change every HR and wellbeing leader should know about now: employers with 250 or more staff will be required to improve their support for unpaid carers from Spring 2027.

Government hasn’t yet published the full specification of what “improved support” will look like. That detail is still to come, and is likely to be shaped by the ongoing consultation on carer’s leave and a proposed right to return to work after a period of intensive caring. What’s already clear is the timeline, and that businesses of this size will need to show they’ve done something about it.

This isn’t only a compliance issue for employers. Many people already in your workforce are managing a second, unpaid job on top of their paid one. The plan itself acknowledges what that costs carers: their health suffers, they become isolated, and their careers quietly stall under the weight of caring duties. Left unaddressed, that tends to surface later as unexplained absence or people simply drifting out of the business.

Practical, human support tends to matter more here than another policy document. Two Generations’ Homeshare model matches older people who have a spare room with someone who needs an affordable place to live and can offer some companionship or informal support in return. For an employee caring for an elderly relative, that can translate into real relief day to day, not just leave to cover a crisis but an actual change to how much caring falls on them alone, which is often what allows them to stay in work at all.

This isn’t new territory for us. Homeshare is already available through employee benefit platforms including Perkbox and Heka, giving companies a route to offer it without needing a new supplier relationship, and we work directly with organisations including a pharmaceutical multinational to deliver it as a named benefit. If your organisation already offers benefits through providers like these, adding Homeshare to the mix is often simpler than starting from scratch.

Spring 2027 is still some way off, but the employers who start thinking about this now will have a genuine offer in place by then, rather than a rushed policy written at the last minute. We’d welcome that conversation whenever you’re ready to have it.

What it means for community partners

The plan is structured around three pillars: recognise, refer and reach. Referral sits at the centre of it, because recognising a carer achieves very little if there’s nowhere to send them next.

Two details in the plan will matter most to GPs, local authorities, discharge teams and charities working with carers. Carers are set to become central to hospital discharge planning under reforms to the Better Care Fund, recognising that discharge too often happens today without the carer being properly involved or prepared. And the plan names something we hear about constantly in our own work: carers dealing with loneliness and isolation, often while caring for someone who is isolated too.

That’s the space Homeshare sits in. By matching an older person with spare space in their home to someone who needs affordable housing and can offer company or support in return, we’re able to ease isolation for both people involved, and often take some pressure off a family carer who can’t be there every day.

This isn’t a new ambition for us, we have a UK-wide network of partners across the public, private and third sectors. We partner with Age UK Hillingdon, Harrow and Brent, Age UK Norfolk, Age UK Enfield and Age UK Herts on Homeshare specifically. On the local authority side, we support referral pathways with councils including Waltham Forest, Harrow and the Isle of Wight, and work with GPs, primary care networks and social care teams. We’re also listed on EMIS, so GPs in London Boroughs can refer patients to us directly through the system they already use every day, rather than needing a separate process. If your organisation already refers into services like these, plugging Homeshare into that pathway is usually a short conversation rather than a new relationship to build from nothing.

Government is now trying to build out proper referral pathways for carers, through GPs, discharge teams, local authorities and the voluntary sector. We’d like to be part of that pathway. If you work with people who are caring, isolated, or both, we’d welcome a conversation about how Homeshare could sit alongside the support you already provide.

Get in touch

Whether you’re an employer preparing for the changes coming in Spring 2027, or a community organisation looking for practical referral options for the carers and older people you support, we’d like to talk to find out more about Homeshare.