Date published: February 5, 2026
Shared Lives in the national Make Care Your Career campaign
Shared Lives is once again being represented in the national Make Care Your Career campaign – a Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) initiative encouraging more people to consider careers in adult social care.
The campaign showcases a wide range of care roles, highlighting the values at the heart of care work and sharing real stories.
And Shared Lives is part of that wider picture – helping to show that a career in care can include welcoming someone into your home and supporting them to live a full life.
Hearing directly from Shared Lives carers
As part of this year’s campaign, Lauren is sharing her experience of being a Shared Lives carer on social media, helping to give an honest, first-hand picture of what the role is really like.
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Lauren talks openly about why she became a Shared Lives carer and what the role involves day to day. Her posts reflect the reality of Shared Lives – the relationships at the centre of it, the responsibility it brings, and the rewards that come from supporting someone through everyday life.
By featuring carers like Lauren, the campaign helps people understand that there isn’t just one way to work in care, and that Shared Lives offers a distinct, relationship-based approach.
Building on last year’s campaign
This year’s involvement builds on Preety and Raj’s inclusion in last year’s Make Care Your Career campaign.
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Preety and Raj’s story helped introduce Shared Lives to new audiences, showing how caring through Shared Lives is shaped around long-term relationships, mutual trust, and ordinary life together.
Seeing Shared Lives positively represented again helps build wider awareness of the model and how it sits alongside other roles in adult social care.
Giving Shared Lives a voice in the conversation
Shared Lives still isn’t as well known as many other care roles, despite its long history and strong outcomes for the people involved. Being included in a national recruitment campaign helps ensure that Shared Lives can be part of the broader conversation about the future of adult social care.
It also helps people who may already be considering a career in care to discover Shared Lives as an option they might not otherwise have come across.
And it means Shared Lives schemes can use Make Care Your Career campaign materials locally to support their own carer recruitment activity, alongside information about how Shared Lives works in their area.
Find out more
If you’re interested in becoming a Shared Lives carer, you can find out more about how Shared Lives works and how to contact your local scheme through our carer enquiry website.
And if you’re a scheme member – you can access the latest resouces from the Shared Lives Carer recruitment resource directory
