WHAT'S NEW? THE CARE WORKERS’ CHARITY RESPONDS TO THE KING’S FUND SOCIAL CARE 360 REPORT
The King’s Fund Social Care 360 Report points to encouraging signs: falling vacancy rates, rising spending and more people receiving publicly funded care than at any point in the last decade. The Care Workers’ Charity welcomes this progress. However, progress on paper does not always reflect reality. Behind every improving headline lies a workforce still being asked to give more than the system is prepared to give back.
The vacancy rate in adult social care has fallen from a pandemic high of over 10% to 7% in 2024/25. However, the report is unambiguous about what has driven it: a sharp increase in international recruitment, with around 235,000 overseas workers joining the sector since 2022. Meanwhile, the number of UK domestic workers has fallen by 85,000 since 2020/21. The domestic pipeline is not recovering, it is shrinking. With the government now proposing that workers who arrived on Health and Care visas wait 15 years for permanent residence, the sector faces a workforce that is simultaneously harder to recruit internationally and failing to attract people at home. That is not stability, it is structural fragility.
Median care worker pay in the independent sector stood at £12.00 per hour in March 2025, just 56p above the National Living Wage. Care workers employed by local authorities fared better at £13.55 per hour, but a £1.55 per hour disparity between sectors is itself a problem that demands attention. More troublingly, the King's Fund data shows that pay increases are now slowing: between March and December 2025, care worker pay increased by 1.7% less than the rise in the National Living Wage, the widest gap since 2019/20. Providers, squeezed by rising National Insurance contributions and inadequate fee increases from local authorities, are absorbing costs by limiting pay growth. The people absorbing that decision are care workers. A care worker with several years' experience now earns just 7p more per hour
than someone on their first day. That is what experience is worth in a system that has never properly valued it.
The government has legislated for the first ever Fair Pay Agreement in adult social care, backed by £500m of funding. The Care Workers' Charity has consistently called for this, and we welcome it unreservedly. However, the first agreement will not land until 2028, and the funding is non-ringfenced; meaning there is no guarantee it reaches care workers' pay packets. Every month between now and 2028 is another month of care workers deciding whether they can afford to stay in a sector they are passionate about. A Fair Pay Agreement that arrives aſter the people it was meant to retain have already leſt is not a victory. It is too little, too late.
Just 4% of the public cited social care as one of the most important issues facing the country in March 2025, unchanged from the previous year and a fraction of the 29% who cited the NHS. Without greater public understanding of what social care is, who delivers it and what is at stake if it fails, the urgency of reform will continue to be diluted. Awareness that does not grow is awareness that cannot drive change.
Karolina Gerlich, CEO of The Care Workers' Charity, said: "This report confirms what we see every day: a sector that is making progress, but on foundations that are not yet strong enough to hold. Falling vacancies are welcome. Rising pay is welcome. But when pay growth is slowing, when domestic recruitment is declining, and when the workers who kept this sector going through a pandemic now face a 15-year wait for the security they were promised, we cannot call this a success story.
“Care workers are not asking for gratitude. They are asking for a system that is honest about what they do, what it costs and what it is worth. The Fair Pay Agreement is a step in the right direction, but steps in the right direction do not help the care worker who cannot cover their bills this month, or the senior care worker who earns 7p more per hour than a colleague on their first day. We need pace, we need funding that is genuinely ringfenced, and we need political will that does not run out of steam before the people it is meant to help ever feel the difference."
www.thecareworkerscharity.org.uk
6
www.tomorrowscare.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
