By Jonathan Gardner, Chief Executive Officer, Bluebird Care
Almost a million young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training (NEET). Alan Milburn, the former Labour health secretary leading the government’s independent review into the issue, has warned of a lost generation, and the Prime Minister has made bringing that number down one of his personal missions. The Youth Guarantee is meant to give every young person a route into work or training.
At the same time, according to Skills for Care, adult social care in England has approximately 96,000 vacancies on any given day, and the sector will need 410,000 more posts by 2040 as the population ages. If the National Care Service goes ahead, this figure is likely to grow, because a service that is free at the point of use will bring more people into contact with care, and even more care professionals will be needed to deliver it.
These two problems are being addressed in different government departments, with Milburn’s review reporting to the Department for Work and Pensions and Baroness Casey’s commission looking at the future of care for the Department of Health and Social Care. Both are likely to produce important findings about the future workforce, but there is a real risk that they operate in silos.
Both challenges should be tackled together. Social care offers jobs in every community, and many roles require no formal qualifications at the outset, so for young people looking for a foothold in the labour market it should be an attractive destination. Yet it rarely features in the advice and support they receive.
There is a common assumption that the public does not value care work, but our research suggests otherwise. Earlier this year, we commissioned nationally representative polling which showed that nearly three quarters of people said they would be proud to tell others they worked in care, and a similar proportion rejected the idea that the work requires little skill. Yet fewer than a third had considered working in the sector or would do so, and half said they would not, which suggests that while people respect care work, few see it as a career for themselves.
Our own workforce reflects the same pattern. When we surveyed colleagues, only 8% said they had joined our organisation for the career prospects, yet 73% now consider it their career, with many progressing into leadership, specialist clinical roles, training and even franchise ownership. Most discovered these opportunities only by chance, and realised the progression prospects it can offer once they had already joined the sector. If young people are to choose care, the sector and the government need to show them what it offers much earlier.
To address this, the government should introduce a professional register for care workers in England. Scotland and Wales already have one, and it gives the role the professional standing it deserves. In our polling, more than four in five people said care professionals should be recognised as skilled professionals in the same way as NHS staff, and a register would signal to young people, and their parents, that this is a skilled profession with proper standards.
It should also build greater respect and closer working between health and social care. Care workers are in people’s homes every day, are often the first to notice when something is wrong, and work alongside GPs, district nurses and hospital teams, yet they are too often treated as an afterthought. If care workers were properly recognised as part of the team around a person, with career pathways that sit alongside equivalent NHS roles, the profession would be far more visible, and far more appealing to someone deciding what to do next.
Finally, the government should put care in front of young people before they fall out of education or work. Schools and colleges should present care careers as readily as they do nursing or medicine, and the Youth Guarantee should name social care as a priority sector, with work experience and placements designed around it. At present, care competes for attention with every other sector, yet the routes to progress are already there: according to Skills for Care, senior care workers and supervisors are the most likely to move into management roles, and there are now around 123,000 manager posts across adult social care. The problem is that young people rarely enter the sector in the first place. According to Skills England, 83% of adult social care apprenticeship starters in 2024/25 were aged over 24, compared with 51% across all apprenticeships.
None of this will fix social care on its own, and the Casey Commission has significant decisions to make on funding and reform. But none of those decisions will succeed without enough people to deliver high quality care, and a National Care Service without the workforce to run it would be a promise the government cannot keep.
With Milburn and Casey both now drafting their recommendations, the government has a rare chance to connect two of its biggest challenges. One review is looking for good jobs for young people, while the other needs hundreds of thousands more people to choose a career in care, and it would be a missed opportunity if they reported without learning from each other.
