14th October 2026
Read Skills for Care’s report.
“It’s positive to see that better employment conditions across the adult social care sector have led to higher levels of retention. This matters enormously to people we support with learning disabilities and autistic people who rely on consistent, skilled support.
At Dimensions, we’re proud to pay close to nine in ten of our support workers at or above £13.45, the Real Living Wage. This is higher than the median hourly pay across the wider sector. Higher pay has led to our colleague turnover falling by more than a third since 2022.
However, Skills for Care’s report exposes serious concerns about the long-term sustainability of the adult social care workforce.
The report estimates that England will need an additional 410,000 adult social care roles by 2040 – an entire city’s population!
But nationally, both domestic and international recruitment are falling. The country faces serious questions about where this city-sized workforce will come from.
Incentives are key to outcomes. The government’s upcoming Fair Pay Agreement in 2028, the recently announced collective pension scheme for care workers, and the current Care Workforce Pathway, established in 2024, are all positive steps in the right direction.
Dimensions is an early adopter of the Care Workforce Pathway. But more widely, this pathway’s potential will be limited unless career development is accompanied by meaningful pay progression.
We cannot expect to build a skilled, experienced workforce without a structure that properly recognises and rewards that experience.
For hundreds of thousands of adults with learning disabilities and autistic people who draw on support, familiar faces, trusted relationships, and consistency are crucial to live fulfilling, independent lives.”