Debate contribution: Support for Carers
Debate contribution by Ms Kate Nicholl on .
- MLA
- Ms Kate Nicholl
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 10 February 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Support for Carers
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4791077
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank Gerry Carroll for tabling the motion. Support for carers, including children who are caring for parents or siblings, is absolutely vital. It is an issue that I first became aware of when I was Lord Mayor of Belfast and one of my charities for the year was Action for Children, which does amazing work with young carers. I had the privilege of meeting that support group. One case study keeps coming into my head. It involves a family with two kids, 13 and 15 years old, who are caring for their parent who is very sick and receiving cancer treatment. They do all the cooking and cleaning. They budget, and they help their parent get dressed. They try to manage and, as things get increasingly expensive, they live with so much anxiety. Then I thought of a friend of mine, who, over Christmas, made the difficult decision to leave her job. She is an unpaid carer for her child, who has complex additional needs. The time and energy required to provide the care was just too great to juggle with her work. She wanted to do that: she wanted to look after her child, and it was right for her, but she just did not have the support to continue doing more. Every day, there are people who are weighing up these decisions about how they look after and provide for their family, and, with over 220,000 people providing unpaid care for their family and friends in Northern Ireland, everyone in the Chamber knows someone in that position. The more I speak to carers, the more I become convinced that, as a society, we need to change how we value care. Something that I have often said about people who work in childcare, in early years education, is absolutely true of unpaid carers: they do some of the most valuable work in our economy but are not valued enough for it. What do we mean by value? How can we ascribe value to the work of unpaid carers? I thought about what Mark H Durkan said about love and devotion: you cannot put a price on it. It is not just about economics, but there are real and practical policy solutions at our disposal that must be implemented to show how we value our carers. Providing paid carers' leave, improving flexible working practices and supplying adequate respite services are practical policy solutions that can help us square the circle of balancing care and work and deliver a fairer deal for unpaid carers. The modelling from Carers NI shows that flexible working and paid carers' leave could, together, increase the number of unpaid carers in employment by between 6,800 and 14,700, help more carers who work part time move to full-time work and take on additional overtime. When I talk about unpaid care at the Economy Committee, people always come back to me and say, "I have just made that decision. I have just had to take that decision to leave work". Highly skilled people are having to leave the workforce because they just do not have the flexibility that is required. The significant roles for Communities, Economy and Health highlight the fact that this is a cross-departmental approach, and that is not just desirable but absolutely fundamental if we are going to secure the support that our carers deserve. That is what the amendment is really about, and my colleague Sian highlighted that so well. So many of the points have already been made, but I close by saying that carers are so often described as invisible labour. However, it is not invisible; we just have not learnt to see it properly. Therefore, having this conversation in the Chamber today is really important. Unpaid carers are doing work that would otherwise be taken on by our already overstretched social care system, but, more than that, they are providing dignity, attention and value to those who really need it. We need to see the Communities, Economy and Health Ministers setting out their approach and delivering on things that they have control over to better deliver for our carers.
689 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.02 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.95).
- 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-flagging 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
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.03 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.01 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.01 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.02 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.02 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.95 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.02 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| 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 | Probability |
|---|---|
| Disability (including neurodivergence and mental health), disabled people and disability or sickness benefits | 0.89 |
| No identity-related subject | 0.05 |
| Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups | 0.04 |
| Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues | 0.02 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.00 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:56 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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