Dr Daniella Jenkins responds to the Prime Minister’s speech on social care.

Today, Andy Burnham sent a strong signal that he is serious about tackling the social care crisis. Bringing forward the Casey Review is the right decision. Social care has been kicked into the long grass for far too long while the cost of inaction has continued to rise.  

For years, governments have asked whether we can afford to invest in social care. The reality is that we have been paying the price of not investing all along. For too many families, that has meant selling homes and draining life savings simply to access the care they need.  

Women have borne the brunt of the fallout from the failure of successive governments to fix social care. They continue to provide the majority of unpaid care, often at significant personal cost: reduced working hours, lower earnings, poorer health and lower pensions. When care systems fail, women are expected to fill in the gaps. 

It is particularly encouraging to see the Prime Minister recognise the importance of the social care workforce, the majority of whom are women. The ambition he has shown today must be matched with long-term reform that recognises the millions of women providing unpaid care and invests in a system that genuinely supports families and delivers the workforce reforms needed to ensure care workers are properly valued, fairly paid and able to build rewarding careers. Any reforms must also tackle the regional inequalities that have left local authorities struggling to sustain a fundamentally broken model of social care funding. 

If the UK is serious about growth, it must be serious about the care economy. We are seeing economic inactivity rates of older women rising and this is driven in part by caring responsibilities. We also know from the Milburn Review that more than one in four (28%) NEET young women were economically inactive due to family responsibilities, compared to around just 6% of NEET young men. 

Moreover, the economic case for investment is overwhelming. Research by the Women’s Budget Group shows that investment in care creates 2.7 times as many jobs as the same investment in construction and these are ‘green jobs’ that support our climate objectives. Care is essential infrastructure, but for too long it has been treated as a private responsibility, leaving Disabled and older people without the support they need while placing impossible pressures on families.  

We are encouraged by the direction of travel outlined today and look forward to seeing further detail. The Women’s Budget Group stands ready to work with all parties and the public to help shape solutions that strengthen the economy, ease pressures on the NHS and improve outcomes for those who need care and those who provide it.

 Dr Daniella Jenkins is Executive Director at the Women’s Budget Group, the UK’s leading feminist economics think tank, providing evidence and analysis on women’s economic position, proposing policy alternatives for a gender-equal economy and acting as a link between academia, the women’s voluntary sector and progressive economic think tanks.

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