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About Us

Facts, figures and the care sector

Updated: 14 October 2010

  • Care Council employs 87 people and has a budget of £10m
  • Almost 10,000 social workers and social care workers are registered with the Care Council
  • Around 150,000 people receive some form of social care in Wales every day
  • Around £1.3bn of public spending goes on social care services every year
  • Social care services are delivered by around 1,800 public, private and voluntary organisations across the country
  • There are about 70,000 social workers and social care workers in Wales. If you add those working in childcare and early years, the total goes up to 88,000. This is a total workforce only slightly less in number than the NHS in Wales
  • Around 87% of the workforce are women
  • 30% of the workforce is aged 50 or over and only 10% is under the age of 25
  • 55% of the workforce is part-time
  • Most of the social care workforce is employed by the independent sector: 86% of care homes, 66% of children’s homes, the majority of home care hours and more than 50% of the workforce are in the private and voluntary sectors
  • Just over 27,000 staff work in local authority social services departments across Wales. More than 15,000 (56%) of these people have the required qualifications and over 4,300 (16%) speak Welsh. 15,600 (58%) work part-time and 11,500 (42%) are full-time staff. (These figures relate to 31 March 2010)
  • Meeting the needs of an ageing population is probably the biggest challenge for social care services
  • In 2006, the proportion of people aged 65 or over was 16%. By 2031, it will have risen to 22%
  • In 2006, there were 3.3 people of working age for every person of state pensionable age. By 2031, it is likely that there will be less than 3 people of working age for every person of state pensionable age
  • There are around 9,000 people aged 100 or over in England and Wales today. This is a 90-fold increase since 1911 and a 7% plus increase since 2005
  • At the current rate of expansion, UK’s centenarian population could reach over 40,000 by 2031
  • People over 90 are the fastest growing segment of the population in the UK
  • In Wales, the number of 65 to 84-year-olds will increase by 24% by 2018
  • People aged 85 or over in Wales will increase by 29% by 2018. Of these, 33% are likely to need 24-hour care
  • It is estimated that, by 2025, Wales will need around 50,000 more social care workers than it has now
  • This would mean that, between now and 2025, around a third of all school leavers in Wales every year would need to become social care workers to meet the projected demand
  • The total value of the social care sector to the economy in Wales is almost £1bn
  • If you add to that the effect of workers spending their earnings in local communities, the overall contribution by social care to the economy of Wales is £1.4bn

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