Since 2021, Community Integrated Care has campaigned to expose and close the pay gap between social care and equivalent roles in the NHS — and to challenge the outdated perception of care work as “low skilled.”
Through our Unfair To Care campaign, we’ve published a series of landmark reports revealing the true scale of the social care pay gap and the workforce crisis it fuels. We partnered with Korn Ferry, the world’s leading experts in job evaluation, to conduct an independent assessment of the frontline Support Worker role — providing a first-of-its-kind analysis that measured the true value, skill and responsibility of the role against equivalent positions across other sectors.
The findings were unambiguous: despite social care work demanding the same level of skill, judgement and responsibility as many NHS and public sector roles, it is consistently paid less.
Our fifth Unfair To Care report, Signs of Change, shows social care support workers still earn £7,048 less a year than NHS colleagues.
The report highlights the progress made, what's at stake, and why closing the gap cannot wait. Because care workers, the people who rely on them, and their families cannot afford to wait.
Social care support workers are frequently expected to manage complex medical needs, safeguarding responsibilities, and life-changing decisions — often with less pay, less recognition, and less career structure than equivalent roles elsewhere in the public sector. Unfair To Care exists to close that gap, and to ensure government policy — including the forthcoming Fair Pay Agreement — reflects the true value of care work.
We’ve been campaigning for fair pay in social care for years — evidencing, again and again, why the pay gap needs to close. It’s an integral part of who we are as a charity. Take a look at our Unfair To Care reports below.
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