Who provides social care services?

The term ‘social care’ covers a huge range of services from care homes and meals on wheels to fostering services and drop-in centres for disabled people. And although social care does not include medical care, many social care providers work alongside health services in providing nursing visits.

In England, more than 1.5 million people use social services and around the same amount work in the sector, through 25,000 plus organisations; public, private and voluntary. This costs the nation around £17.5 billion.

Overall, one in 25 of the national working population is employed by the care sector, and there are also an estimated six million unpaid carers.

What is the future of social care?

People over 65 are the largest group of people using publicly funded social care. That number is predicted to rise as people live longer and rates of diseases connected to ageing, such as Alzheimer’s, increase.

But there is also a revolution happening in social care. The Government wants to introduce more personalised care, so that care users become customers who exercise choice. This will automatically increase the quality of care as agencies will have to compete with another to provide the best service.

Care customers are already being empowered by the introduction of Direct Payments so that they can choose their own care service.

Who are the main care providers?

Care packages come in many shapes and sizes. You can often customise your own service by using a mix of what’s available.

There are care providers that are private companies. There are also not-for-profit organisations that plough their proceeds back into their agencies or homes and sometimes the council itself acts as a care provider.

By law, councils must find out what sort of social care their local residents need, and to provide or commission that care. Many people, though, buy their care privately and so never come into contact with their council’s social services department.

But whatever type of organisation is providing the care, privately run or otherwise, they are all inspected regularly by us at CSCI.

You can find out about all the care homes and services local to you by searching our list of care homes and services. Your local council will also be able to give you a list of the care homes in your area.

State of social care

To find out more about the big picture of social care read our annual report to Parliament on an overview of the social care sector, the State of Social Care report.