King's College London

Career aspirations of social care workers and responses to them

Background

Putting People at the Heart of Care, the government’s 2021 white paper on adult social care (ASC) reform, notes at the very outset the need for the sector’s workforce ‘to have opportunities to develop their careers’ (DHSC, 2021:7). Such opportunities are seen as a means of attracting workers to and retaining them in a sector characterised by relatively high vacancy and turnover rates, with implications for the continuity and quality of service delivery. As Skills for Care (SfC) (2023:78) stresses, ‘Promoting opportunities for career development can help with retaining experienced staff.’

There are career opportunities in social care with over 50 vocational qualifications at different levels in social care (Career progression (skillsforcare.org.uk). Indeed SfC lists a range of direct care, management, registered professional and ancillary job roles available in the sector (Job roles (skillsforcare.org.uk)) However, the capacity of social care providers to offer and support such career opportunities, and indeed more broadly for the sector to provide the necessary training and development infrastructure to facilitate them, remains unclear and perhaps problematic. Thus, with apprenticeships a key lever for facilitating career progression, it is striking that the number of apprenticeship-starts in social care has fallen markedly in recent years. As SfC (2023:145) notes, ‘Around 28,700 people started a social care apprenticeship in 2021/22, which was 15% less than the previous year, and around 71% less than in 2016/17.’

More generally, the need for workers in social care to upskill, underpinned and encouraged by clear career development pathways, is deepened by the growing scale and complexity of care needs. As SfC (2022) stress, ‘Social care requires much more complex skills than it did even 10-years ago as we support people with more complex needs and so investing in learning and development is essential.’ Such pressures have encouraged an interest in the establishment of a career structure which reflects the skills developed by social care workers and provides a clear career trajectory as they do so. Putting People at the Heart of Care proposed a ‘universal’ career structure for the sector based on a knowledge and skills framework. Taking this forward, DHSC published guidance in January 2024 (updated in May 2025) on a care workforce career pathway (Care workforce pathway for adult social care: overview (gov.uk) Also in 2024, SfC published their Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care in England (Workforce Strategy (Skills for Care))

Aims

This project aims to explore the current state of career development and progression in the social care sector around career aspirations of social care workers and the reality of training and progression opportunities. More specifically the project aims to consider:

• Interest and aspirations for progression among care workers, scale and scope (e.g. relating to care workforce career pathway, pay rises)
• Reality of progression opportunities from care worker, employer and industry stakeholder perspectives (access to training/CPD/upskilling, value of training)
• The challenges faced by social care workers, with diverse personal characteristics - including age, sex/gender, ethnicity and disability - in achieving their career aspirations
• The extent to and ways in which social care providers and system leaders are seeking to address these career aspirations both in term of in-role development and progression through career pathways
• Interest in learning and development and uptake by care workers
• Interest in training and upskilling, e.g. taking on more clinical tasks
• Impact of training on skills and care provision.

Methods

• A document review focusing on the role and strategies of ICSs, Care Associations and other stakeholders in supporting and developing career opportunities for social care employees
• Interviews with care workers (n=30)
• Interviews with experts and industry stakeholders (and care providers/employers) (n=20)
• Close collaboration with colleagues working on the care workforce survey, especially to support care worker recruitment.

Timeframe

May 2025 – February 2026

Funding

NIHR Policy Research Programme: NIHR206121(02)

Policy relevance

As suggested by Putting People at the Heart of Care, the development of career opportunities for employees is pivotal to workforce management in adult social care, a means of addressing the challenges of recruitment and retention and a way of underpinning the process of upskilling as the needs of care receivers increase in scale, intensity, and complexity. ‘We want the social care workforce to be recognised as the professional workforce it is, and to improve people’s perception and experience of a career in care’ (DHSC, 2024).This means supporting people to work at the top of their competence, to feel empowered to deliver high-quality care, and to develop and progress in their careers. The project has been designed to inform policy makers at different levels of the social care system. We will make links with the national developments through the PPHC white paper and the DHSC career pathway strategy and guidance to increase sector-wide knowledge and skills. The focus on the individual worker level allows to investigate how policies, initiatives and aspirations and the take up of such opportunities align, and how they might be impacted by care worker characteristics and systematic factors.

Dissemination

The main output from this study will be a report of findings which will be shared with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) prior to publication and discussion with policy colleagues. Once the report is agreed we will send a copy of the summary and recommendations to all participants and publish the full report online on the Unit’s website and the IFS website. We will also prepare further outputs, working with local partners (ARC-SL and Making Research Count) and national stakeholders. We will present findings at academic conferences and publish at least one article in a peer reviewed journal.

This project outline (2025) is an amended version of the one originally published.