Member's statement: Unpaid and Informal Carers

Member's statement by Mr Colm Gildernew on 12 February 2024.

MLA: Mr Colm Gildernew
Party at the time: Sinn Féin
Date: 12 February 2024
Type: Member's statement
Business: Members' Statements
Heading: Unpaid and Informal Carers
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 4217577

Text

I thank you, a Cheann Comhairle, for providing me with the opportunity to make what I believe to be a very important statement about the support or, indeed, the lack of support, that we provide to unpaid or informal carers. It is clear that, even before COVID, there were serious pressures in that sector in providing support. Unpaid carers provide up to a third of all care in the North. The entire health and social care system would literally collapse without those carers, and the danger is that we are overseeing a system in which individual carers are collapsing and care is breaking down as a result of unsustainable pressure. In relation to adult respite services and complex needs in particular, in my constituency, in Dungannon, Woodlawn House, an eight-bed unit, had to close before Christmas as a result of inadequate provision for the sector. Immediately, eight families had their respite cancelled. They had nowhere to send their loved one for that period. That is absolutely no reflection on the staff throughout the health and social care system or those in Woodlawn House, who try to do the best that they can in the face of huge pressure, but staff vacancies are too great, and there is not enough recruitment and retention. We urgently need to see staff getting the pay that they deserve, to deal with that retention and recruitment issue, but we also need to plan for better respite services. A full one third of informal, unpaid carers have received no respite whatever over the past 12 months. The 'State of Caring' report by Carers NI demonstrates that that leads to much worse outcomes for them in their mental health, physical health and loneliness. All those issues provide a challenge to them. I ask the Minister of Health and any Department or Minister with a role in relation to carers to look at that. I hope that we can put in place in this mandate some additional support for our badly pressed carers.

335 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not qualifying

Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not qualifying”.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.02 (qualifying needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not qualifying).
None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.96).
No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
Subject area: Disability (including neurodivergence and mental health), disabled people and disability or sickness benefits.
The overall probability was at or below the not-qualifying threshold.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.02	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.02	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.01	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.02	No
Controversy escalation	0.02	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.96	Yes
Overall judgement	0.02	At or below not-qualifying threshold

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing (chosen)	1.00
Reports or questions it	0.00
Criticises or condemns it	0.00
Adopts it	0.00

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
Disability (including neurodivergence and mental health), disabled people and disability or sickness benefits	0.70
No identity-related subject	0.26
Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues	0.02
Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups	0.01
Another identity-related subject	0.01

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:35 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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