Research by Homecare Voices on what employment in homecare looks like in practice.
Author: Rachel Kelso
This timely research from Homecare Voices draws on insights from 511 current and former domiciliary care workers, providing rare, worker-led insight into what employment in homecare looks like in practice.
Homecare Voices is a free peer support network run by and for homecare workers. Homecare Voices provides a space for England's 655,000 domiciliary care workers to come together, support one another and contribute their expertise to national conversations about social care.
This report lifts the lid on the nuances and extent of substandard employment practice in domiciliary care. As a community of current and former homecare workers, we hope to serve the interests of the people we support as well as our own, since our treatment has knock-on effects
for quality of care.We deliberately covered a lot of ground. This reflects the lack of recent or, indeed, any research about some of the topics examined. It also accounts for the reality that Homecare Voices’ future as a free-to-join network for a distinctly under-resourced group is never guaranteed.
Given our proximity to the adult social care sector, we share these insights with a full appreciation of the ongoing and serious financial pressures on local authorities, regulators and - profits aside - care providers. These pressures do not invalidate the experiences of direct care workers, and the interests of every stakeholder deserve representation. Mainstream narratives about adult social care continue to be shaped almost exclusively by care providing companies, and their interests are identifiable in the most unexpected of places.
One of the many hard-earned skills that committed homecare workers have in common is getting things done in the face of adversity. This conditioning to always go the extra mile, and to make good with little, is the reason Homecare Voices exists.
Thank you to every person who has recognised the immense need for our network, and supported us where they can.
Further thanks to every single one of our members and, in particular, to our small band of volunteers. They are the true force to be reckoned with.
Read and download the free pdf in your browser, link below.
Find out more about Homecare Voices at: https://www.homecarewg.org
The publisher is Homecare Voices. Behind Closed Doors © Rachel Kelso 2026.
social care, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Paper
