The Care Workers’ Charity (CWC) has today published its 2025 Impact Report, offering a detailed account of the financial, professional and mental wellbeing challenges facing paid adult social care workers across the UK, and the breadth of support the Charity provided in response.
In 2025, CWC awarded 864 grants totalling £366,316, processed in an average of nine days. For the care workers who received them, those grants meant staying in work, maintaining housing, and avoiding a financial crisis that, in many cases, had been building for some time. Forty-five percent went towards essential daily living costs, reflecting the extent to which cost-of-living pressures have become a sustained reality rather than a temporary shock for much of the workforce. A further 17% supported car repairs and transport, a particular pressure point for domiciliary care workers for whom a vehicle is not optional.
The picture that emerges from CWC’s 2025 Care Worker Wellbeing Survey, completed by over 2,000 care workers, is one of a workforce that remains deeply committed to the people it supports, while carrying significant personal pressures. Eighty-seven percent of respondents feel they make a real difference to those they care for. At the same time, 72% do not feel financially secure, 81% have been directly affected by the cost-of-living crisis, and nearly one in four has used a food bank. Forty-two percent reported feeling unhappy or depressed, and over a third said the job is negatively affecting their mental health.
These findings informed a significant programme of advocacy work in 2025. In May, ten Advisory Board and Champions members presented the Wellbeing Survey findings directly to policymakers at the Houses of Parliament, hosted by David Baines MP. In September, Advisory Board member Hannah Reseigh-Lincoln addressed the House of Lords Afternoon Tea, sponsored by Baroness Kay Andrews OBE, speaking to the importance of care workers’ lived experience in driving sector reform. Members also took part in roundtables with the Department of Health and Social Care and the CQC, and co-produced The CWC’s ‘Centring Care Workers’ guide, setting a new standard for meaningful workforce engagement across the sector.
The Advisory Board and Champions Project, funded by The Rayne Foundation, is a paid professional body compensated at £25 per hour in line with NIHR guidelines, reflecting CWC’s commitment to treating care workers’ time and expertise as genuinely valuable.
The year also saw significant growth in partnership and fundraising. Virgin Money’s first-of-its-kind commitment to donate a percentage of arrangement fees on new and renewed care sector lending raised £125,037 between April and December 2025. The Care Sector Fundraising Ball raised over £215,000 across three charities, and over 100 organisations supported CWC through sponsorship, supporter membership and events fundraising across the year. The Care Sector Fundraising Ball raised over £215,000 for CWC, Marie Curie UK and Care Rights UK.
Looking ahead, 2026 will be a year of expansion, with plans to deepen local authority partnerships and build on the corporate giving model established with Virgin Money.
Karolina Gerlich, CEO of The Care Workers’ Charity, said:
This report is, first and foremost, a thank you: to every care worker who shared their story, every donor who trusted us, every partner who stood alongside us, every Advisory Board and Champions member who gave their time and expertise, and to our trustees, whose dedication and commitment to this cause makes everything we do possible. You are the reason any of this is possible.
To every care worker in the UK: thank you. Thank you for showing up every day for some of the most vulnerable people in this country. Thank you for the dignity you protect when systems fail and the compassion you give freely when very little is given back. You hold this country together. We see that. We will never stop saying it.
Every number in this report is a person, and every person deserved better than having to come to us in the first place. We are proud of what we have achieved in 2025. But we will not stop until care workers have the pay, the protection and the recognition this work has always deserved. Until that day comes, we will be here.