Social care 360: public attitudes

13. Public attitudes

Public prioritisation of social care has fallen since Covid-19

Why is this indicator important?

Without greater public prioritisation of the need to reform adult social care, it is less of a focus for politicians and so reform is less likely to be introduced.

What was the annual change?

In March 2025, the percentage of the public saying – unprompted – that social care (or related issues) was one of the most important issues facing the country was 4%. This is the same as the percentage in March 2024.

Prioritisation is much lower than for the NHS. Unprompted, 29% of people said ‘National Health Service/Hospitals/Healthcare’ was one of the most important issues for the country in March 2025, compared to 35% in March 2024.

What is the longer-term trend?

The percentage of people, unprompted, citing social care as an important issue facing the country has been at a similarly low level since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.

Prioritisation was higher in the 2010s but has never exceeded 20%. Peaks tend to happen when a government proposes changes to how social care is funded and organised, generating media coverage and public debate. For example, there appears to be a small increase in interest at the time of the Dilnot report in 2011 that falls back again and then gradually increases over time until spiking significantly in the 2017 general election campaign, when Theresa May’s proposals were dubbed a ‘dementia tax’. There is also a small spike when Boris Johnson proposed a health and care levy in 2021, with plans to introduce a lifetime ‘cap’ on social care costs.

What explains this?

Overall, lack of public prioritisation of social care is likely to reflect a range of factors, including:

• lack of understanding of the nature of social care, which is in turn partly driven by its unclear boundary with the NHS

• the reality that relatively few people are using social care services at any one time

• people do not think about social care because it is associated with issues (disability and ageing) that people find it hard to contemplate.

More people prioritise social care when prompted (ie, when it is included in a list of options for them to respond to). For example, 31% of people said care for older and disabled people was an issue that would be very important to them in helping them decide who to vote for at the 2024 general election. The salience of social care as an issue also increases when it is presented as something that affects an issue people prioritise more strongly – the NHS.

The most credible explanation for the fall in public prioritisation of social care since 2020 is that people are reflecting the issues that have become most important to them personally during and in the aftermath of Covid-19: the impact of the pandemic itself and, more recently, rises in the cost of living and concerns around immigration. A consistently higher-scoring issue was the NHS.

What has happened in 2025/26?

As of February, public prioritisation remained at similar levels – 2%.

In May 2026, the Casey Commission was due to begin a public engagement exercise on reform of social care.