Care England was delighted to help kick off Professional Care Workers’ Week 2026, joining The Care Workers’ Charity, the National Care Forum and the Homecare Association for the opening webinar of this year’s programme: From Crisis to Career: Building Long-Term Futures in Care.
Professional Care Workers’ Week runs from 14–18 September and is now in its ninth year. The word “Professional” is important. The Care Workers’ Charity deliberately uses it to recognise care work as skilled, responsible and essential work, and to make the case for fair pay, meaningful career development and greater professional recognition.
Care England’s Social Care Advisor Richard Ayres joined Liz Jones, Deputy CEO and Policy Director at the National Care Forum, and Dr Jane Townson OBE, Chief Executive of the Homecare Association, for a wide-ranging discussion about whether we are finally reaching a point where a job in social care can consistently be seen, supported and rewarded as a genuine long-term career.
What were we asked?
The discussion explored some fundamental questions for the future of the workforce:
- Will the renewed political focus on social care create an opportunity for meaningful workforce reform?
- Why is care work still too often regarded as a “stopgap” rather than a career?
- What should a genuine career in adult social care actually look like?
- Where are the opportunities for progression and specialisation?
- What stops experienced people staying in the sector?
- And, ultimately, what would convince us that things are genuinely beginning to change?
Timing wise, in July, Prime Minister Andy Burnham identified the social care workforce as an immediate priority alongside the longer-term work towards a National Care Service, specifically highlighting better pay, training, job security and progression.
The panel welcomed that renewed attention. But there was also a consistent warning: ambition will only translate into change if workforce reform is properly funded and if commissioning practice enables providers to create the jobs, careers and conditions government says it wants.
Care work is skilled work
One of the clearest themes was that the language used about care continues to undersell the reality of the job.
Compassion and values are fundamental, but professional care workers also exercise judgement, manage risk, safeguard people, administer medication, support people living with dementia and other complex conditions, provide end-of-life care, work alongside families and increasingly undertake activities traditionally associated with healthcare.
The evidence reinforces that point. The latest national workforce research found that 59% of people in direct care roles undertake delegated healthcare activities sometimes or often, yet 85% receive no additional pay for doing so.
If we want care to be perceived differently, we have to describe it differently. Care is not simply “helping work”. It is skilled professional practice.
A career should not mean one ladder
Another strong message from the panel was that we need to move away from the assumption that career progression always means becoming a manager.
There are obvious routes from care worker to senior care worker, team leader, deputy and registered manager. But there are also opportunities in dementia and learning disability support, safeguarding, delegated healthcare, quality and compliance, learning and development, digital care, care technology and a growing range of specialist practitioner roles.
Liz Jones highlighted the development of the care technologist role as an example of how the workforce must evolve as technology becomes increasingly embedded in care and support.
Richard Ayres described career development as being more like a flexible journey than a single ladder. People should be able to move upwards, sideways, specialise, take on different responsibilities at different stages of their lives and, importantly, remain an expert frontline care worker if that is the career they want.
That also requires greater portability of skills and training. Moving between providers, settings or different parts of adult social care should not mean repeatedly proving the same basic competencies or duplicating training unnecessarily.
A successful workforce pathway should therefore allow somebody to build a career within care, rather than requiring them to leave frontline care in order to progress.
And there is a wider test. Someone should be able to spend 30 or 40 years as a professional care worker, build expertise and experience, earn a decent living and ultimately retire with financial security. If that is not possible, we cannot credibly describe the role as a sustainable long-term career.
Responsibility and reward have drifted apart
Across the panel there was substantial agreement that one of the biggest workforce problems is the growing gap between responsibility and reward.
Experienced colleagues frequently become the “shock absorbers” of services. They mentor new starters, manage complexity, cover gaps, support families, absorb additional responsibilities and help keep services stable.
Yet pay differentials between new entrants, experienced care workers and more senior roles have become increasingly compressed.
The latest national workforce survey illustrates the scale of the challenge. Despite some improvement, 56% of the workforce still report having no or insufficient financial security, 49% say their hourly pay is too low and 46% often or constantly worry about work outside working hours.
Jane Townson also highlighted the particular relationship between commissioning and employment conditions in homecare. Fragmented purchasing, insecure volumes of work and payment based narrowly on contact time can make it extremely difficult for providers to offer the predictable hours and secure income that workers understandably want.
This is why workforce policy cannot be separated from commissioning policy.
If commissioners want providers to offer better pay, proper differentials, pensions, paid training, supervision and secure employment, those costs must be recognised in the price of care.
Retention is as important as recruitment
The panel also discussed the danger of focusing so heavily on recruitment that the experience and contribution of people already working in care becomes overlooked.
Recognition is about more than saying thank you.
It means recognising time served, experience and competence. It means ensuring that taking on additional responsibility brings meaningful reward. It means supporting wellbeing and responding properly to burnout, violence, harassment and abuse.
National research found that 41% of the adult social care workforce experienced physical violence from somebody they cared for or supported during the previous year, while 39% experienced harassment, bullying or abuse from people they support.
Experienced workers are enormously valuable. Successful organisations that retain those people for many years have lessons the rest of the sector should understand and share.
Retention should therefore become one of our measures of professionalisation, rather than continually accepting high turnover and attempting to replace the people we lose.
What would genuine change look like?
For Care England, there are several signs we should be looking for.
The Care Workforce Pathway needs to become something workers recognise and employers can practically use, rather than simply another framework that has been published. Skills and qualifications need to become more portable. Training needs to be accessible and funded. Increased skill and responsibility need to be reflected in reward. Commissioners need to recognise workforce investment as part of the genuine cost of delivering care.
And career development needs to work for the workforce we actually have people of different ages, backgrounds, ambitions and stages of life.
Perhaps most importantly, we should reach a point where we talk about care work as naturally as we talk about other professions: as a career offering purpose, expertise, development, specialism and opportunity.
We need care workers themselves to shape what happens next
Professional Care Workers’ Week is also a reminder that workforce reform cannot be designed solely around care workers. It has to be developed with them.
Two important workforce surveys are currently open, and Care England is encouraging providers to share both with their teams and give colleagues the opportunity to participate.
The Care Workers’ Charity 2026 Care Worker Wellbeing Survey takes around 15–20 minutes and is gathering evidence directly from care workers about the issues affecting their working lives and wellbeing.
Take part in The Care Workers’ Charity 2026 Care Worker Wellbeing Survey
The 2026 Adult Social Care Workforce Survey is being conducted by Ipsos in partnership with Skills for Care and the University of Kent on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care. It covers working life, wellbeing, training and development, career plans and the factors influencing whether people remain in or leave adult social care. Responses are confidential.
Take part in the 2026 Adult Social Care Workforce Survey
The more people who participate, the stronger the evidence available to Care England, our partners, government and the wider sector when decisions are made about pay, workforce development, commissioning and reform.
From crisis to career
The opening conversation of Professional Care Workers’ Week ultimately came back to one central point.
Adult social care already contains extraordinary careers. People enter frontline roles and become managers, specialist practitioners, trainers, quality leaders, technologists, entrepreneurs and senior leaders. Others remain outstanding frontline professionals throughout their working lives.
The opportunity already exists.
Our challenge is to build the funding, recognition, employment conditions and professional infrastructure around it.
If we can do that, care work stops being described as a stepping stone to somewhere else and starts being recognised for what it should always have been: a skilled, valued and sustainable professional career in its own right.
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