Caring Times editor Sam Lewis discusses the recent news that a “comfortable” retirement reportedly costs Brits over £1 million, and reflects on what this says about the country’s struggling social care system.

Reading about the scarily large amount of money needed for a “comfortable” retirement, I found myself pondering the real problem facing the UK social care system.

For those of us working in the sector day in, day out, it is easy to end up stuck in the weeds, focusing on the minutiae and not looking at the bigger picture.

When I attend conferences and events in the sector, the discussions cover every manner of challenge faced by care services: from the major – lack of funding, the need for reform, recruitment and retention, the government’s apparent lack of concern, issues with the regulator and local authorities – to the, if not minor, then more specific – marketing, training, nutrition, fostering a good work culture, tech implementation… I could go on.

The conversation always seems to come back to “We need more funding and reform”, but I’ve always found this a frustrating topic. Not because I disagree with the sentiment, but because, even in my short two years writing about the sector, it feels like a fruitless endeavour.

I don’t know how many years or decades the sector has been going round in circles with various governments, but, while I believe we should keep campaigning, I don’t think we should count on the support we want any time soon. ‘Hope for the best; plan for the worst,’ seems an appropriate position to take.

However, what we often neglect to discuss when talking around this subject is the true cause, the root of the problem: population.

Or, more specifically, the UK’s ageing population.

I know I’m not breaking news to anyone here. It’s obvious: when one generation is more populous than the next, the burden on the younger generation when the elder reaches retirement age is greater.

Now add onto that inflation, and the dramatically increased length of most people’s retirements compared to several decades ago, and you have an unsustainable elderly population.

That is the true cause of the social care sector’s woes. Yes, there are plenty of other issues to tackle, from the ground level right up to central government, but the biggest issue of them all is the age demographic breakdown of our population.

The country is quite literally out of balance, as a result of growing life expectancies, and the financial burden has become almost unsustainable. We now can, apparently, no longer afford to support all of our older and vulnerable citizens – at least not in a dignified way that gives them maximum quality of life in their later years.

So, what can be done about this?

Unfortunately, I don’t have a silver bullet. Nor do I have a magic wand to wave. I wish I did.

Ironically, though, attracting as many international workers as possible is one solution that comes to mind. Bringing in younger workers will go some way to redressing the imbalance.

Sadly, our most recent government has done everything in its power to deter migrants, only worsening the situation. (We’ll see if the next one does anything meaningful to reverse this.)

One provider I spoke to last week told me that he believes the number of care sector vacancies will have risen to over 200,000 by the time Skills for Care’s annual ‘The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ report is released in October 2024. This would mark an increase of a third over the already horrifying, record 152,000 vacancies in 2022/23.

Of course, this is an incredibly difficult conversation to have, and it can be come political and argumentative very quickly, which is not my intention.

Sometimes, though, it is the difficult conversations that are the most important. If other countries are to follow this trajectory seen in places like the UK and Japan, it is actually a good thing; in the long-term it will bring down the global population and curtail some of the issues caused by overpopulation. In that sense, ageing populations can be seen as a necessary evil, one which will help us secure a better for future for the next generations.

In the meantime, however, we need to work out a means of looking after our elderly without sacrificing their quality of life, along with our economy, because that is what is happening right now.