About this campaign
Usdaw campaigns for improved rights for parents and carers, and provide resources to inform members and reps about their existing rights, including accessing time-off and financial support through tax credits and other in-work benefits.
Each year, we run a spotlight day to focus on a particular issue, providing briefings and materials to help reps and activists organise a campaign event in their store.
This year’s Supporting Parents and Carers Spotlight Day took place on Wednesday 25 June 2025.
How to support the campaign
- Get involved on ‘Supporting Parents and Carers’ Spotlight Day
- Take our survey - your experiences can help improve support for neurodiversity at work
- Share your story - If you're a parent or carer caring for anyone who faces issues at work due to neurodivergence, help us raise awareness by sharing your story. Contact the magazine team at [email protected]
- Pledge your support
- Display our posters on your workplace noticeboard
Parents and Carers Spotlight Day
This year, our campaign Spotlight Day theme is 'Celebrating Different Minds.'
The aim is to highlight the issues facing neurodivergent members at work and raise awareness of the support available to parents and carers who have neurodivergent family members.
Usdaw's Spotlight Day will look to:
- Celebrate neurodiversity.
- Raise awareness of how a lack of understanding leads to people with neurodivergence being excluded from, and treated less favourably, in work.
- Inform people of the support members and those who are parenting neurodivergent children, or caring for neurodivergent adults, can expect to receive at work
- Signpost members to organisations that specialise in advising neurodivergent people and their families about the support they are entitled to outside of the workplace.
What we achieved last year
Last year's theme was 'Stand up for Carers' and, from April 2024, employees will have a statutory right to a week’s unpaid leave to care for a dependant. The carer’s leave regulations allow up to five days off each year to provide care for people who are elderly, are disabled or have an illness or injury lasting more than three months.
Employees using the leave must take a minimum of half a working day at a time; a working day meaning the employee’s usual working pattern. There is no need for the leave to be used on consecutive days, so that could be five separate days over a 12-month rolling period.
However, Usdaw believes this still doesn't go far enough and the leave needs to be paid.
