Adult Social Care Worker Pay Variation in England, 2026

Research from 2026 explores variations in pay for adult social care workers in England. The study, authored by Carol Atkinson, combines statistical analysis from Skills for Care, a provider survey, and interviews with managers and workers. It investigates how local conditions, authority purchasing, and pay levels impact staff retention and care quality.

Use Cases

• Analyzing regional pay disparities in social care based on local deprivation data mentioned in the description
• Modeling the relationship between local authority procurement processes and worker compensation as described
• Investigating the impact of pay variation on worker turnover and skill development as explored in the research

Strengths

• Combines quantitative statistics, organizational surveys, and qualitative interviews for a multi-method approach.
• Explicitly focuses on the under-researched link between pay, workforce stability, and care quality.
• Released under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license for reuse.

Limitations

• The 3.9 MB size suggests the primary data is a report, not a raw dataset; analysis requires extraction.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for quantitative modeling.

Provenance

Source

Carol Atkinson via figshare

Collection Method

Research combining analysis of Skills for Care statistics, a survey of care providers, and interviews with managers and workers.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-02 16:10:40; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England