Why care matters?
One in twenty people who work in Britain have jobs in adult social care.[i] Most of them will tell you the same thing: the work they do every day bears little resemblance to how social care is talked about in public.
Jobs in social care are skilled, purposeful, humane and rewarding. Care providers help people to live varied and stimulating lives, with control and independence. Social care generates collaboration, connection and happiness.
Yes, there are problems. Social care isn’t always perfect and there isn’t always enough of it. But there is a huge mismatch between the public conversation about care and the day-to-day experiences of people who draw on and provide support.
That gap is the reason we are setting up Care Matters, as a hub for evidence, ideas and action on how good social care can help adults live fulfilling lives with the right support.
The untold story of specialist social care
Care Matters has been established by three specialist social care providers - Choice Care, ivolve Care & Support and Voyage Care - who between them support nearly 6,000 people and employ over 17,000 colleagues.
Specialist social care supports adults who need significant, long-term help to live the lives they choose: people with learning disabilities, autism, mental health conditions, brain injuries, addiction, or complex physical and sensory disabilities. They are supported in homes and flats, up and down the country, with the same right as their neighbours to pop to the shop, jump on a bus or go to college.
Social care for people with enduring support needs is not a small or marginal part of British life. Up to 750,000 adults under the age of 65 receive support for ongoing or lifelong needs and as a country we spend almost £20 billion each year in providing it. Around half of this money is for people with learning disabilities.[ii] And demand is rising: 8% more working-age disabled people will need support in 2033 than did in 2023.[iii]
The money we spend on social care translates into independence and wellbeing for hundreds of thousands of individuals, helping people to live ordinary, fulfilling lives. Yet the dominant public narrative is one of unrelieved crisis - insufficient funding, families unsupported, providers on the brink, vulnerable workers exploited, failures of care, and unfair, unaffordable charges.
We need to be honest about the challenges facing adult social care. But a story told only through the language of crisis does real damage. It obscures what people achieve every day with good support. It makes others fear for the future. It devalues the skill of the care workforce.
Negative portrayals of adult social care as a career actively deter people from applying for jobs in the sector, making the workforce challenge harder. Sadly, too many people in the UK want work and cannot find a suitable job. And social care has good jobs available. Our services should be attracting far more British jobseekers.
Good support and care in practice
Care is a story of local community connection. Every day, skilled and dedicated care workers enable people to live a "gloriously ordinary life" - supporting hopes and opportunities, creating agency, sustaining health, managing risk, and stitching together all the support and services available in communities so that people can thrive.
That empowerment and coordination is expert work, and it is undervalued. People working in specialist social care hold deep understandings of the people they support and a sophisticated ability to knit fragmented inputs together — families, friends, community healthcare, housing, social work, education and employment services. Care workers weave the web of community that form around individuals - both when life is settled and at moments of change, risk and opportunity, for example as people reach adulthood or leave institutional care.
Specialist social care transforms lives. And it reduces risk, cost and demand within communities and public services. Care is not a cost to be contained; it is an investment in a strong society.
What Care Matters will do
Care Matters is an expert hub that will bring together research, new ideas and personal experience. By exploring what works, what good support makes possible, and where things need to change, we will contribute to a better understanding of social care and help shape a brighter future for people who draw on support.
We are launching now, at a moment of opportunity, with the new Prime Minister’s commitment to social care reform and the promise of major proposals from the Casey Review in 2027. Three commitments will shape how we will work.
We will amplify voices. The people who draw on support and the people who provide it are the experts in good care. We will tell their stories, and bring their experience into debates that must not happen without them.
We will be optimistic. Being positive about the future is not to deny current challenges. It is to say that better social care tomorrow will grow from the good that already exists today. We can find sustainable approaches to reforming care while still celebrating the extraordinary work in social care already.
We will collaborate. We will create big ideas and practical insights, working alongside people who draw on and provide support, social care leaders, politicians and all those who can influence how we understand and change social care. Good care is personal and local, but the conditions that produce it demand consistency and predictability across time and place, which means planning together, nationally, for the long term.
Care is the foundation of what makes us human
Adult social care is not a sector or a service; nor a set of contracts, or regulations or payments. Its mission extends beyond safe and stable support: it is about human connection, and the relationships which make people flourish, between those who care and those who draw on care.
With the Government committing to fundamental reform, this is the moment to recognise the mission and opportunity; to build the case for the sustained investment required to deliver the empowering support each individual needs, on the scale required by society’s growing demand for care. That is why Care Matters exists.
[i] There were 1.465 million employees in adult social care in England in 2024/25 (Skills for Care) and 28.83 million in work in England in July-September 2024 (ONS) – i.e. 5.1% working in adult social care. The ratio will be the same or higher in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
[ii] Laing, W, Adult Specialise Care UK Market Report, 7th edition, LaingBuisson, 2025
[iii] Hu, B, Hancock, R, Wittenberg, R, Mayorga, J and Pauschardt, J, Projections for adult social care demand and expenditure in England, 2023–2043, Care Policy and Evaluation Centre, 2026