The Care Workers’ Charity Responds to The King’s Fund Report: ‘Not My Priority’ – How the Public Sees Social Care
The Care Workers’ Charity (CWC) welcomes the publication of ‘Not My Priority’: How the Public Sees Social Care (and What Can Be Done About It) by The King’s Fund. The report’s findings, while sobering, reflect what The Care Workers’ Charity sees and hears from care workers every day.
The report confirms that social care remains fundamentally misunderstood by the public and consistently low on political agendas. Crucially, it identifies staff pay, working conditions and training as the single biggest driver of public dissatisfaction with social care (cited by 57% of those surveyed in the British Social Attitudes survey).
The report also highlights a finding that The Care Workers’ Charity considers particularly important: public satisfaction among people who actually use social care services stands at around 66%. This points to a sector whose workforce continues to deliver compassionate, skilled care under enormous pressure, yet whose efforts are obscured by systemic underfunding and poor pay.
The King’s Fund is rightly cautious that constant ‘crisis’ messaging, while sometimes necessary, risks compounding public fatalism about whether change is possible. The Care Workers’ Charity advocates for immediate change to mitigate the crisis, but urges that a narrative of ‘fatalism’ can only truly be countered through tangible change and progress for the sector and care workers. Care workers deserve to be seen not only as victims of a broken system, but as the skilled professionals and advocates for reform that they are.
Karolina Gerlich, CEO of The Care Workers’ Charity, said: “This report confirms what care workers have been telling us for years. The public recognises that pay and conditions in social care are failing. Yet the workforce continues to be overlooked when reform conversations turn to funding. We cannot build a social care system that works for the people who draw on it without first building one that works for the people who deliver it.”
The Care Workers’ Charity is calling for the following as an immediate priority:
- Fair pay and restored pay progression must be at the heart of social care reform.
- Care workers must be recognised as active partners in reform, not its passive beneficiaries. The King’s Fund report rightly identifies the 1.5 million care workers in England as potential ambassadors for change. That potential is realised if care workers have genuine power in the conversations that shape their profession.
- Any cross-party consensus on social care reform must include workforce investment as a non-negotiable condition, not an afterthought.
The Care Workers’ Charity continues to advocate for a social care system that values its workforce as the skilled, essential professionals they are.
For further information, please contact Sophie Henry at The Care Workers’ Charity at sophie@thecwc.org.uk.