What Andy Burnham's Social Care Reform Means for Employers - and How to Prepare

On 29 July 2026, Prime Minister Andy Burnham gave his first major speech on social care since taking office. He set out how his government plans to reform adult social care in England.

It's worth HR leaders paying attention. This lands alongside the existing Unpaid Carers Action Plan and the incoming changes to the Employment Rights Act - two initiatives already reshaping what's expected of employers with 250+ staff.

Burnham's personal story

Burnham’s speech  came at a personal moment for him: his father has Alzheimer's disease and lives in a care home.He said that watching his father's care over the past few years has changed how he sees the issue. 

He described the hundreds of staff who've cared for his dad, many of them people who moved to the UK from abroad, and pointed to the specific moments they’d helped him: moving this father from a wheelchair to an armchair without distress, or drawing out a flash of his old personality in conversation. 

That's why, he said, care workers should be "the best paid people in society, not the worst."

He also pointed to 15-minute care visits, the standard length that many councils fund, being  part of the problem: that timeframe is workable if someone's needs are simple, but not if they aren’t. 

Often when a carer can't sort a problem in that window, they're told to call 999, which can mean an unnecessary hospital trip for someone who didn't need one.

He closed by saying he's doing this for his father, and for the millions of families in the same position.

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The actions he has proposed

Burnham called the decades of political inaction a "major dereliction of public duty," and said politicians - himself included - had put point-scoring before fixing it. This was his promise to do exactly that.

This covered four main actions:

1. The Casey review is being brought forward. Baroness Louise Casey's Independent Commission on Adult Social Care now has until Summer 2027 to report, which is a year earlier than planned. The goal  is to design a National Care Service built around the person receiving care, not a medical checklist - and closely linked to the NHS so that people can be cared for at home instead of  hospital beds.
2. A public consultation is under way. Casey has launched a "Big Conversation on Care," asking the public how much responsibility the state should take for care, and how it gets paid for.
3. Care worker pay is going up. A fair pay agreement for social care staff is already confirmed for 2028/29. Burnham wants to go further and bring care pay closer to NHS pay scales, with clearer routes for care workers to move into NHS jobs.
4. Cross-party talks have started. Burnham has invited the Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders to the table. There have been 22 failed attempts at social care reform in the last 30 years, largely because no funding model has survived a change of government, and he's pitching this as a chance to break that run.

He hasn't ruled out tax rises further down the line, but has stuck to the pledge not to raise income tax, employee National Insurance or VAT right now. The immediate changes, he says, will come from existing budgets.

The state of care right now

A few numbers explain why the pressure has built up:

• Unpaid care in the UK is worth an estimated £184 billion a year to the economy, up 29% since 2011, according to research from the Centre for Care and Carers UK.
• Adult social care in England employs around 1.6 million people. The workforce grew by 22,000 posts, or 1.4%, in 2025/26.
• In adult social care, 6.2% of posts were vacant in 2025/26 - that’s around 96,000 unfilled jobs, the lowest rate since 2015/16, but still roughly three times the vacancy rate in the wider economy. It's a positive trend, but a marginal one: care is still far harder to staff than most jobs.
• Skills for Care says the sector will need 410,000 more posts by 2040 just to keep pace with the ageing population. Meanwhile the number of British nationals working in care fell by 40,000 in 2025/26 alone, and new international recruits dropped to 30,000, the lowest in four years, after the overseas care worker visa route closed in July 2025.
• Nearly 600 people a day leave work altogether to provide unpaid care. 62% of people who take on caring responsibilities say they had no real choice, because there were no other care option, often because they are unaffordable to them.
• 43% of current or former carers say a mental or physical health condition has developed or worsened since they took on caring responsibilities.

Baroness Casey has described families ending up as their own project managers - chasing appointments, chasing funding, filling the gaps between services with nobody else to call. 

Much of that lands on people who are also trying to hold down a job.

What this means for your organisation

Reform like this takes years, and Casey's final recommendations aren't due until Summer 2027. But the direction is obvious: more carers will be disclosing their situation, and more will be expected of employers to support them. This is a societal challenge that is only growing, and workforces have a role in helping their already-stretched employees.

The employers who will come out of this well are the ones already thinking about it. They  know how many carers they employ, what they actually need, and where their current support falls short - so when the new requirements do land, they're not starting from zero.

That's exactly what the Unpaid Carers Action Plan is asking employers to start doing, and it's worth reading properly if you haven't already. We broke down what it means for your organisation, and some practical steps to take before Spring 2027, here. 

Please note, the Unpaid Carers Action Plan was written under the previous Starmer government, before Burnham took over as Prime Minister, but the Action Plan itself still stands - nothing in Burnham's speech changes what's expected of employers between now and Spring 2027.

Getting the right support for your employees

Reform will take shape over the next couple of years, but there are actions you can take to support the carers in your workforce now. 

This is about more than a blanket extension of flexible leave. By understanding the nuance of what carers are working with, you can help to provide the more practical support that solves their biggest challenges.

KareHero pairs employees with a real Care Advocate, who helps them to understand, find and fund the right care. We can  handle the legal and admin side, taking the weight off your people, and providing that crucial relief. This fits alongside your existing leave policies, to help employees get back on their feet, and back into work.

If you’re still understanding how your existing benefits and policies help carers - and how you stack up up against your peers - take our 5-minute quiz, ‘Are you prepared for the government's upcoming changes?’ 

Or if you’re ready for a conversation about how KareHero can work with your company, book a 15-minute call with our team to see how we can help you prepare.