UK social care and health policy

If AI is to help bridge health-system capacity gaps, governments need to change how they think about risk.

The RCN’s Last Shift Survey has found collapsing growth in the registered nurse workforce and increasingly complex patient needs leaving nursing staff exhausted and struggling to keep people safe.

Report highlights growing importance of trust, reputation and early-stage visibility, particularly in home care.

This Working Paper was written by Dr Meherunissa Hamid and Professor Shereen Hussein, and is summarised by Meherunissa here.

At every point in the system and for many involved, the social care funding model is failing. This crisis is only accelerating in the face of an ageing population and the growing cost of delivering care. 

By Re-engage 07 Apr 26 On World Health Day 2026, we are calling on UK governments to make accessing GP appointments easier for older people as many practices continue to insist on online bookings only.

In 2019, the last government pledged to add 50,000 more registered nurses to the NHS in England by 2024/25 – a target that was met in 2023. But it’s been unclear how this was achieved and the lessons for policymakers from how it was done. In this long read, Lucina Rolewicz and Billy Palmer highlight the key findings from an NIHR-funded evaluation of the N50k programme, and – ahead of a new workforce plan for the NHS – emphasise the importance of learning the lessons from previous efforts to drive up the numbers of nurses in the health service.

Independent review of pay comparability for doctors and dentists by IDR for the DDRB.

Birth partners are not visitors. A birth partner’s role for the physical and emotional wellbeing and safety of women and birthing people in the hours before and after childbirth is significant.

• 74% of carers in employment say being able to work supports their wellbeing, offering a break from caring, boosting confidence and social contact• Despite this, nearly half (47%) of carers who are employees are considering cutting their working hours or giving up work altogether.

In a new report released today, the Centre for Care explores Social Care Co-operatives in the UK. The report authors provide a summary here.

This series of reports sets out what dementia training is currently offered and the quality of that training.

Trust is changing shape. Institutional trust remains under pressure.

Race Equality Foundation’s new report reveals how structural racism, insecure work and inadequate sick pay are driving a growing health crisis for Black and Asian workers in the UK.

Our digital exclusion index is designed to help ICBs understand the context of their neighbourhoods when commissioning healthcare services.

The Chair of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, Baroness Heather Hallett, has today published her third report which concludes that the UK’s healthcare systems “came close to collapse”. Ultimately it “coped, but only just”.

The report finds that the NHS is deeply dependent on internationally educated staff. It says one in three doctors were trained overseas, around one in four registrants on the UK nursing register were internationally educated in 2025 and nearly half of new nursing joiners in 2023/24 were...