Protection from discrimination

If you are looking after someone who is elderly or disabled, the law will protect you from direct discrimination or harassment because of your caring responsibilities.

This is because you are counted as being 'associated' with someone who is protected by the law because of their age or disability. 

Someone may experience discrimination in the workplace, in relation to education, housing, buying goods or services or accessing public services.

There are three things to keep in mind when thinking about whether the Equality Act applies to your situation:

1/ Protected characteristics – Why have you or the person you are looking after been treated unfairly?

2/ Sector – Where did the unfair treatment happen?

3/ Prohibited conduct – How were you or the person you are looking after treated unfairly?

The Equality Act offers protection against being treated unfairly because of:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage or civil partnership
• pregnancy
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation.

These are known as “protected characteristics” and where someone is treated unfairly because of them, this is called “discrimination”.

In some cases, the Equality Act can also protect carers from being treated unfairly because of their association with the person they care for; this is called “discrimination by association”.

This information focuses mainly on “disability discrimination” and “discrimination by association”, but it is important to be aware that the Equality Act applies to all of the above characteristics. Therefore if you, or the person you are looking after, have experienced discrimination because of any of the characteristics listed above, then you should get some further advice – see our list of useful organisations.

The Equality Act covers you and the person you care for in relation to:

• employment (such as applying for jobs or work place practices)
• education (such as school, colleges, universities)
• housing (such as buying and renting houses or flats)
• goods or services (such as shops, restaurants and public services etc.)
• travel and transport
• public authorities (such as local council, NHS, local authority schools).
  
  

Once you have established why you, or the person you are looking after, have been treated unfairly and where this has taken place, the next step is to consider whether this unfair treatment is unlawful under the Equality Act.

The different types of discrimination are outlined below:

Direct discrimination

Direct discrimination is where someone with a protected characteristic such as a disability is treated less favourably than someone else in the same situation who does not share the protected characteristic.

Indirect discrimination

This is where there is a general rule, criteria or practice that applies to everyone but in practice it particularly disadvantages people with certain protected characteristics.

Discrimination by association

This is where someone is treated less favourably because of their link or association with the protected characteristic of someone else (such as a carer’s link to the disabled person they are looking after).