Workforce
The care recruitment model is to blame for the sector’s staffing problems
The adult social care workforce crisis is being worsened by outdated recruitment models that prioritise quick placements over long-term stability, writes Karan Elvin.
“I’m sick and tired of how recruitment within the care home sector works! I post a job ad paying £13 per hour for my support workers, and before the end of the day I see 20 similar job posts paying £15 per hour... and it’s clearly for my home! Recruitment agencies are stealing the applications from me... and then selling the job seekers to me, and then six months later I go through the same cycle! Someone please stop them!” Diana O, Adored Care. For years, the conversation around
adult social care has centred on workforce shortages. Vacancy rates, retention challenges and growing demand are regularly presented as proof that the UK simply does not have enough people willing to work in care. But after years working inside recruitment
and speaking to providers across the country, I have come to believe the issue is more fundamental than that.
The care sector does not have a staffing
problem. It has a recruitment model problem. There are people in the UK looking for stable work. There are people who care deeply about others. There are people who would thrive in caring professions if given the right opportunity and environment. Yet despite this, care providers continue to struggle to recruit and retain staff in a sustainable way. That raises an uncomfortable but
necessary question: if both jobs and workers exist, why is the system failing to connect them effectively? The answer lies in the way recruitment in social care has evolved over the past decade. Too often, care homes and support
providers are separated from candidates by layers of agencies, job boards, inflated fees and fragmented hiring processes. Recruitment has become transactional rather than relational. Providers spend
enormous amounts of money trying to fill vacancies while candidates move through impersonal systems that frequently fail to assess whether there is any real long-term fit between employer and employee. The result is a cycle of instability that
damages providers, workers and ultimately the people receiving care. Before founding No More Recruiters,
I worked within recruitment in children’s residential care. During that time, one comment repeatedly surfaced from care home owners and managers: many felt trapped in a system they no longer believed worked for them. They spoke about escalating agency costs,
poor candidate matching, constant turnover and feeling forced into dependency on recruiters simply to maintain safe staffing levels. Some providers described spending tens of thousands of pounds annually just trying to keep rotas filled.
October 2026
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