New report finds Shared Lives carer fees below social care average

We know from conversations with our members that Shared Lives fees vary across the country, and that some carers receive nowhere near enough amid the rising cost-of-living crisis.

But we needed to know exactly how, and how much, Shared Lives carers were being paid in the different UK regions to begin to campaign for fee uplifts. Thanks to our research, we now have a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the pay practices in each of those regions.

This report incorporates that regional data with pay information from the wider social care sector and economy to develop an accurate national picture of Shared Lives carer pay. We are thus able to properly situate carer fees within the context of wider pay and conditions in the United Kingdom. The key findings from the research are:

• Fee levels, structure and breakdown of fees, and types of commissioning organisation vary considerably across the UK. This is due to the market model of social care provision, and the organic development of Shared Lives services over time.
• On average, Shared Lives carer fees are below the sector average, and even national minimum wage. Average care and support fees for Shared Lives carers supporting single people in live-in arrangements on the lowest banding, are below the average junior care worker salary and the national minimum wage.
• Shared Lives carers lose money in comparison to private renters. Shared Lives carers supporting people in live-in arrangements have a spare room in the property they occupy. In Shared Lives they earn on average little over half of what they would if they rented the room out privately.
• More than a quarter of Shared Lives carers are at risk of leaving the sector due to financial pressures. 31% of carers surveyed said that they had considered leaving Shared Lives altogether because of the cost of living.

Shared Lives represents a wonderful opportunity to transform the social care system. It creates record-breaking outcomes for the people it supports, is more cost-effective than its alternatives and requires little capital investment to scale up. Yet this transformative potential cannot be undermined by continuing to undervalue the carers who make it happen.