PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Department of Health and Social Care: Carers (9 June 2020)

As part of our commitment to achieving a workforce representative of the society we service and providing equality of opportunity, we monitor representation of all protected characteristics across the Department. We also provide the opportunity for staff to self-declare if they have caring responsibilities.

Providing this information relies on employees voluntarily completing their diversity information on our electronic HR system and we continue to encourage staff to complete their self-declaration.

The declaration rate for caring responsibilities within the Department is 52.1% (as at 31 March 2020) and therefore, to note that the information provided is based on how many staff self-declared they had caring responsibilities in each respective year.

- 2016 – 703

- 2017 – 458

- 2018 – 410

- 2019 – 420

- 2020 – 388

It should be noted that the data is as of 31 March of each year. It includes civil servants only (permanent, fixed-term appointment and loan in) but excludes secondee in and loan out employees. It excludes contingent labour (contractors, consultants and agency workers) as we do not record this information for them.