Working in care
Working in care
Adult social care in England is a legal frame with people working inside it. The organisation a support worker turns up for carries duties set by Parliament, and much of the sector is registered with a regulator whose records are public. This section reads both, and dates what it reads.
Last checked on 3 September 2026
What does this section cover?
Two pages, for now. This one describes the work and the frame it sits in. The other, what a provider must do, takes the duties of a support organisation one by one, with the section of law beside each one and the date of the version read. The two pages are written to be read in either order, because they answer the same question from two ends: what the work is, and what the law asks of the organisation that provides it.
They are also written for two readers. The first already does the work and wants to know what the organisation they work for is required to do. The second is thinking about the work and wants to know what it involves before applying for anything. They read the same pages, because the honest answer to the second question is mostly the first one read carefully.
Both readers arrive in the middle of a journey that started before they got there. The support an adult receives was set in motion by a request, an assessment and a decision, and knowing which of those steps an organisation is delivering makes the job legible. The fourteen steps of that journey are lined up in the route map, with the section of the Care Act 2014 that carries each one.
What is the work?
Support work is the work of helping an adult live the life they have chosen, in the place they have chosen to live it. It happens in ordinary houses on ordinary streets, at the pace the person sets rather than the pace of a ward round or a shift bell. Some of it is practical: meals, prompts about medication, laundry, the walk from the front door to the bus stop. Some of it is administrative: the record of what happened, written so that the next shift and the next review can read it. Most of it never reaches a form at all, because most of it is the company of another person and the steady repetition of ordinary life.
The vocabulary of the work is worth learning early, because the words used in a handover, in a plan and in a letter from a council decide what a person is recorded as needing. The first distinction to learn is the one between a learning disability and a learning difficulty, which in England do not name the same thing. The plain words version is on what a learning disability is, and it is the page the rest of this handbook leans on.
What does the law ask of the organisation you work for?
The Care Act 2014 sets out what a council in England must do for an adult who needs care and support: assess, decide against national criteria, and meet the needs it has decided to meet. An organisation that provides support usually delivers something decided under those duties rather than instead of them, which is why a support worker who knows the shape of the Act is better placed to answer the question behind most disagreements: whose decision was this, and under what power.
Care Act 2014, contents page. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.
The organisation also carries things of its own: the records it keeps, the way it handles a concern, and the conditions of its registration where the support it provides is registered. Those duties are the subject of the page named at the top of this one, and they are written there so that each one can be checked against the text it comes from.
What does registration cover?
The Care Quality Commission keeps the public register of the organisations and the services that provide regulated activity in England. Registration attaches to the regulated activity an organisation provides, and the definition of which activities are regulated belongs to the regulator: its own pages describe that perimeter, and this handbook points to them rather than restating it.
The register is not a closed document. The commission publishes its Care Directory every week, and the directories with filters and with ratings every month. The versions listed when those pages were read were 2 September 2026 for the weekly file and 4 August 2026 for the two monthly files. They are large files, and this handbook reads them for what they count: the pages here describe kinds of service, and they name no organisation.
Care Quality Commission, Using CQC data: Care Directory published weekly, version 2 September 2026, and directories with filters and with ratings published monthly, version 4 August 2026. cqc.org.uk, read on 3 September 2026.
How is the workforce counted?
Once a year, by one organisation, in a report with a long title: The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England. Skills for Care published the edition consulted here on 15 October 2025, on 2024/25 data. Its figures live in the report and in a visualisation tool published beside it, and they are the figures behind almost everything anyone says about how many people do this work in England and on what terms.
Skills for Care, The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England, published 15 October 2025, on 2024/25 data. skillsforcare.org.uk, read on 3 September 2026.
This handbook prints a figure from that report once the report itself has been opened, and not before. Until then the pages here describe the sector in words, and the register of dated notes records when a yearly publication moves, with the date it was read.
How do people come into this work?
In two broad ways. Most people are employed by an organisation, in roles that run from front line support to management, and the pay and the conditions of a particular job belong to the organisation that advertises it. The other way runs in the opposite direction: a person who arranges their own support with money paid to them by their council can employ their own assistance, and the questions that follow, from pay to records to who answers for what, are employment questions like anyone else's. They are taken up in personal budgets and pay.
Care Act 2014, sections 31, 32 and 33, on direct payments. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.
The routes in, the training that goes with a first job and the qualifications the sector recognises are the subject of a page this section has not published yet. When it arrives it will carry the same dated source lines as the rest of this handbook, because a page about entering a profession has no business being less careful than a page about the law that governs it.
What this section is
These pages explain what the law says about the work and about the organisations that provide it. They are not legal advice about your situation, and they do not assess an individual case or an individual organisation. The Care Act 2014 applies in England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own law, and a page written from the Care Act does not describe them.
Sources read for this page
- Skills for Care, The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England, published 15 October 2025
- Care Quality Commission, Using CQC data
- Care Act 2014, revised text on legislation.gov.uk, version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026
Each source above was opened on 3 September 2026. Where a page here prints a section number or a figure, the source line beside it names the version that number was read from.