The Health Foundation – The cost of caring: poverty and deprivation among residential care workers in the UK
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The Health Foundation – The cost of caring: poverty and deprivation among residential care workers in the UK
Adult social care workers – who are mostly women – are among the lowest paid in the UK.
The cost of caring: poverty and deprivation among residential care workers in the UK
“Around 1 in 5 people in the UK live in poverty. They may be deprived of food, shelter, clothing, and other essentials. Poverty and deprivation affect people’s health and limit their ability to live a healthy life. Government policy is that ‘work is the best route out of poverty’. But while employment is one of the main ways to exit poverty, around half of those experiencing poverty in the UK live in households where at least one adult is in paid work.
Adult social care workers – who are mostly women – are among the lowest paid in the UK. Social care staff also experience insecure employment conditions and are more likely to be on zero-hours contracts and carry out shift and night work than other low-paid UK workers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, vacancy and turnover rates in the sector are high and rising. The social care system is under extreme strain, unable to provide care to everyone who needs it.
Unlike other low-paid sectors, such as retail and hospitality, government has a large influence on pay in social care. Levels of central government funding affect how much local authorities can pay care providers to deliver services, and how far many care providers can increase wages for staff. Yet social care has suffered years of underfunding by central government: when the pandemic hit in 2020, government spending per person on adult social care services in England was lower in real terms than in 2010. In recent years, devolved governments in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have introduced policies to increase pay or offer one-off payments for care staff. But policy to improve pay for social care staff in England has been limited.
Evidence suggests residential care workers in the UK face among the highest rates of poverty and experience financial difficulties, like being unable to pay rent. Analysis of data from 2013–2018 in the US found residential care workers more likely to experience food insecurity than other workers. But we know little about experiences of poverty and deprivation among social care workers in the UK, and the factors that shape them.”