Dear Andy,

Your speech in Makerfield made us hopeful. 

You talked about your experience with your dad and being humbled by the amazing team who care for him. You said the system that surrounds them is broken, and that it exploits the people who hold it together. You’re right on every count. 

I’m supporting the Care About Care campaign, which is calling on politicians to give social care the recognition it has been denied for more than two decades. We are writing to you today because what you said about care is the change we want to see and the change we are fighting for. 

We hope you’ll use your campaign platform over the next month to keep speaking about the social care system. Its contribution to people, communities, and the economy has been forgotten about for too long, with Westminster politicians consistently putting it at the bottom of the list.  

Yet, social care supports nearly 900,000 people to live fulfilling lives, on their terms. It contributes £78 billion to the economy – more than entertainment and tourism. It employs 1.6 million people – more than the NHS.  

Nearly a third of council’s commission home care at a fee rate that doesn’t even cover the statutory employment cost of paying care workers the minimum wage. On average, the state pays as little as £7 an hour for someone’s residential care, despite this needing to cover everything from team member wages through to the cost of accommodation and energy.  

These rates means that care providers cannot deliver the high-quality service we all want, care workers cannot be paid a fair wage that recognises their value to society, and the people who  rely on the system cannot access the care and support they need – more than two million people are going without support. 

Care About Care is asking Government to act on three things to support the care sector today, while longer term reform plans are put in place: 

• An immediate pay rise for care workers. Reverse the recent Employer National Insurance increase for the care sector, with this £1bn then ringfenced to boost care worker pay. This is an immediate, deliverable, fully funded pay rise that doesn’t require waiting until the Fair Pay Agreement starts in 2028.

• A fair cost of care. Councils need to fund care services based on an independently calculated cost of delivery, paid on time and in full by local councils – themselves properly funded by central government in recognition of how vital social care is to people and the NHS.

• Investment in the local care providers who sit at the heart of their communities. Introducing a new ‘British Care Fund’ offering infrastructure grants to the small, community-based providers who deliver most of Britain’s care will mean more people can invest in their services, improve quality, and continue serving their communities.

These are asks that can be delivered immediately and don’t require waiting until the Casey Commission report, or the decade of implementation that’s expected to follow it.  

We need quick change today, stabilising the sector and giving long-term reform the best opportunity to succeed. People who need care cannot wait that long. Care workers cannot wait that long. Families like yours across the country cannot wait that long.  

Your campaign has offered us hope and the opportunity for change. We hope you’ll continue to celebrate the importance of social care over the campaign period – after all, every one of us will need care or knows someone who will. It’s vital for us all.