The Care Workers’ Charity Responds to Baroness Casey’s Speech at the Nuffield Trust Summit
The Care Workers’ Charity welcomes Baroness Casey’s address to the Nuffield Trust Summit and the serious, unflinching account she has given of the structural challenges facing adult social care. Her words reflect much of what care workers tell us every day, and we are encouraged to hear them spoken with such clarity at a national level.
Baroness Casey is right that the system is fragile, fragmented, and has never had its moment of reckoning. As she noted, the average care worker earns just £23,460. Our own 2025 Wellbeing Survey, drawing on responses from over 2,000 care workers, found that 72% do not feel financially secure and nearly 29% have used a food bank in the past year. These are not peripheral concerns. They are the lived reality of the people delivering care every day.
We particularly welcome Baroness Casey’s insistence that reform should not wait for the Commission to conclude. The case for change is already made. The evidence is already there.
What we would add is that the Social Care workforce context is not simply a symptom of the system’s failure. Care workers are skilled professionals and active agents of reform. Those delivering care in England understand what a better system looks like, because they navigate its gaps every single day. Their expertise must not only inform the Commission’s recommendations; it must shape them.
Karolina Gerlich, CEO of The Care Workers’ Charity, said: “Baroness Casey has named what care workers have long known: this country has never truly decided what social care is for, or what it owes to the people who deliver it. That has to change, and it has to change now, not in 2028. We look forward to working with the Commission to ensure that care workers’ voices are at the centre of what comes next. Reform built without them will not hold.”
The Care Workers’ Charity is calling for:
- Immediate action on workforce pay and conditions, in parallel with, and not dependent on, the Commission’s final recommendations.
- Meaningful involvement of care workers in the Commission’s national conversation and in the design of any future National Care Service.
- Recognition of care work as a skilled profession in all workforce reform, commissioning, and funding decisions that follow.
For further information, please contact Sophie Henry at The Care Workers’ Charity at sophie@thecwc.org.uk.