Successive governments have failed to allocate enough money to deliver quality care. The situation is at breaking point.

Care work is beset by:

• Poverty pay – the average rate of pay just above the legal minimum
• Unreliable, vulnerable employment – one in four care workers is on a zero-hours contract
• Impossible shift rotas and not being given enough time to care
• Violence and aggression -Nearly a third (31%) of care workers have experienced personal threats or even been attacked
• Staff routinely leave the profession – annual turnover was almost 31%

The current system fails to prioritise high quality care over profits and has left the sector on the brink of collapse. According to the Kings Fund, local authority spending on social care for older people has fallen in real terms by 17 per cent since 2009/10. In July 2019, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee called for an immediate £8 billion cash injection into adult social care to restore the quality of and access to adult social care to acceptable levels. The funding crisis has it’s source in Westminster, but the effects are being felt across the whole of the UK.

Enough is enough. Care workers and care users deserve decent care. We are fighting for good jobs and sustainable funding for social care.

Check if your council has signed UNISON’s Ethical Care Charter using our postcode checker. If not, 45 councils in the UK already have, so ask your councillor to use their influence to ensure your council does too. It takes one minute.

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Building on success

UNISON organises, represents and campaigns for
care workers. We are the UK’s biggest union,
with 1.3 million members, and the biggest union
in social care. We have a plan to change care and we are building on our formidable experience in the sector.

• We are exposing the scandalous working conditions care workers are exposed to, and demanding action from employers.
• We have taken a case to the Supreme Court, to get overnight ‘sleep-in’ shifts treated as ‘working time’, so care workers can be paid fairly for them.
• We negotiate with national care providers and local employers to win care workers better pay and working conditions.
• We are lobbying politicians and other decision makers to get the money which is so desperately needed, put into social care.
• We want to plug the leaks in social care funding by ending the scandal of care money being used to fund debt arrangements for private companies
•  We are campaigning for the status of care work to be raised, with proper structures for qualifications, training and career development.