Workforce well-being annual report: 2025 to 2026

In recent years, there’s been growing evidence that supporting well-being can benefit people working in social care and early years and childcare, and improve the quality of care people receive.

Working in social care or early years and childcare can be an inspiring and rewarding career, but we know that the pressures in these sectors can affect workforce well-being.

It’s one of the ambitions of A Healthier Wales, our joint workforce strategy with Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) for health and social care, to create an engaged, motivated and healthy workforce. 

Our strategic plan also sets out our commitment to improving well-being for the social care and early years workforce.

Evidence tells us that good workplace well-being makes a real difference. It means:

• we have a sense of purpose and achievement in our role
• we perform better if we’re happier at work and we’re confident in what we’re doing, which means we support people better
• staff who feel supported at work are more likely to stay with an organisation.

We’ve written an evidence summary about the link between good workplace well-being and retention, which you can read on our Insight Collective website.

Workforce well-being must be a group effort. We provide frameworks and tools to help the sector work towards a positive culture that supports the well-being of the workforce.

Our framework, Your well-being matters, sets out actions that employers, manager and workers can take to achieve better well-being. Each area of the workforce, along with trade unions, plays an important role in bringing this vision to life.

In early 2025, we carried out our annual ‘Have your say’ social care workforce survey.

As part of the survey, we asked people in social care about the things that affect their health and well-being.

This year, we saw some positive change, despite real pressures impacting on the health and well-being of the workforce.

We assessed the well-being of the workforce using the ONS4. These are four measures used by the Office for National Statistics to capture different types of personal well-being on a scale of 0 to 10. We compared the average response from this survey with the UK average for each measure. We also compared the average response from this survey with the averages found in 2024.  Each of the findings below is higher than the UK average and the averages found in 2024: 

• Satisfaction with life: 7.78 (UK average: 7.45, 2024 average 6.54)
• Life is worthwhile: 8.25 (UK average: 7.73, 2024 average 7.11)
• Happiness yesterday: 7.75 (UK average: 7.39, 2024 average 6.58)
• Anxiety: 5.30 (UK average: 3.23, 2024 average 4.35) 

We also asked other questions about well-being. We found that: 

• 83 per cent said their morale was good, up from 77 per cent in 2024 and 65 per cent in 2023
• 54 per cent said they struggled to switch off when they leave work, down from 57 per cent in 2024 and 63 per cent in 2023
• 44 per cent suggested they had enough support to deal with stress, up from 41 per cent in 2024 and 31 per cent in 2023
• the main causes of stress reported were workload (35 per cent), paperwork or administrative load (27 per cent), and worrying about things outside of work (24 per cent)
  • These were also the four leading causes of stress in 2024, with similar proportions of respondents reporting in each category. 
• most people ask their line manager (46 per cent) or look at their employer’s website or intranet (43 per cent) for health and well-being information
• 29 per cent of all respondents suggested that they would go to Social Care Wales to find out more information about health and well-being at work, up from 26 per cent in 2024.

People working in early years and childcare in Wales show huge dedication, but are struggling with recruitment challenges and high levels of stress, anxiety and low morale. The 2025 survey shows many practitioners reporting that they feel overworked and undervalued by the public. The survey found that:

• nearly half (45 per cent) of respondents report reduced concentration.
• 30 per cent report losing sleep due to worry.
• 43 per cent report feeling under increased strain. 

Some of the reasons they gave were widespread feelings of being overworked and undervalued within the sector.

Areas that affected their well-being also included:

• low pay
• limited career progression
• pressure from changing (child places) funding methods.

Despite these challenges, practitioners show high levels of commitment to children and families. They often cite their passion for their work as a reason for staying in the sector.

These findings show how important it is that we continue to offer our well-being information sessions. We’re also continuing to share the well-being framework as a resource to help improve well-being in settings.

We’ll use what we learn from these surveys to inform our work to support the well-being of the workforce. We’ll also carry on learning from research, and our work with the workforce and our partners.

We’re committed to improving workforce well-being. This year, that means:

• promoting our health and well-being framework and well-being webpages, where employers and employees can measure their organisation against an agreed set of standards
• hosting our second online well-being week for the social care and early years workforce
• providing information sessions, workshops and talks for the sector about how they can look after their well-being at work – including mental health, menopause, men’s mental health and people with caring responsibilities
• continuing to build our network, including online meetings, to help the sector share ideas and overcome challenges
• offering specific training to support managers, such as the mental health and well-being toolkit series and menopause support for employers 
• continuing to promote available support to the social care and early years workforce, including Canopi. 

In October 2022, we launched a well-being framework for the social care, early years and childcare sector.

This year, we saw an average of 40 visits per month to the framework webpages, with an increase of visits each quarter. 

Across all our health and well-being webpages, we had 3,784 visits this year.

We promote our framework at all our workshops and events. More than half of the people we spoke to (53 per cent) told us they already knew about the framework, which gives us an opportunity to promote to people who weren’t aware of the framework and widen our reach. 

We also asked the workforce if the framework helped them in their work in any way.

Those who said it helped them told us:

Over the last year we held learning sessions for the sector, which were attended by 261 people (excluding Well-being Week). These events were valuable opportunities for social care professionals to share best practice, build knowledge, and strengthen their well-being and resilience.

Highlights

We held 20 learning sessions, with themes including:

• the Carers Leave Act
• menopause
• mental health in the workplace
• men’s mental health.

From the feedback we received across all sessions, we heard:

• 99 per cent of participants said they had learned something
• 96 per cent said they were able to use what they learned in the workplace.

Some examples of how what people learned will be used in the workplace were:

We had positive feedback from participants. Here are some of the things they told us:

This year, we held our second well-being week. This was a virtual conference that took place from 19 to 23 January to coincide with ‘Blue Monday’, which is often considered the most challenging day of the year for mental health.

We offered practical learning and information sessions, in line with our four well-being commitments. This supported our wider aim of improving the workforce’s well-being.

We held nine online sessions, which were attended by 405 people – almost 100 more than last year. We explored topics including:

• supporting stress and anxiety in work
• leading with emotional intelligence 
• organisational workforce well-being
• the power of storytelling
• women and confidence 
• men's mental health 
• prioritising your well-being working as a Responsible Individual
• supporting people with long-term conditions to stay in and return to work. 

People in the sector directly shaped these themes and topics – we used their feedback from previous events, our ongoing conversations with them, and what we learned from our annual workforce survey. We also made sure our themes were aligned to the commitments set out in our framework.

Well-being Week highlighted the sector’s commitment to creating mentally healthy work environments. It showed the value of bringing people together to learn, reflect, and build on what works.

We had positive feedback from attendees at a number of these events. Of those who gave feedback,

• 99 per cent said they learned something new
• 99 per cent said they learned something they could use in the workplace.

We presented at forums, roadshows, and conferences to raise awareness of workforce well-being and the support available through our framework and resources. Attendees included: 

• managers
• early years and social care practitioners
• responsible individuals
• social workers and social work educators
• adult social care employers.

This helped us extend our reach so our messages were heard across different areas of early years and social care.

This year, we’ve continued to work closely with external partners and internal colleagues. This has included:

• working with Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board and Denbighshire Voluntary Services council to run a conference for health and social care staff on women’s health
• promoting  Canopi, the mental health support service
• promoting offers of support from other organisations, including Canopi, the Welsh Government funded mental health support service for health and social care staff
  • Canopi regularly shares insights with us – including the number of referrals from the social care sector, why callers are referred, and the types of support people need.
• supporting Care Inspectorate Wales by creating a folder of resources to help inspectors raise awareness of well-being support when they speak to registered providers
• connecting our framework to the toolkit to support the national commissioning framework for care and support, linked to standard 6 (ethical and fair work practices)
• working closely with other areas in Social Care Wales, and strengthening the connection between well-being and compassionate leadership, strengths-based practice, and positive cultures. 
• running a session during Social Work Week, with 100 per cent of those who gave feedback saying they would think or do something different after attending the session
• working with colleagues to develop a resource for people new to working in social care in Wales.

The number of people joining our network has steadily increased each quarter over the year, from 215 at the start of the year to 319. This includes 84 people working in early years and childcare.

Most people join to get information about workforce well-being. We send a bulletin with network updates, helpful information, resources and events. This year we produced six bulletins. 

This year, we started to run online meetings for the network. This year, we held three meetings. 38 people in total attended the sessions.

100 per cent of the people who gave feedback said they learned something. 

Next year, we will be focussing on:

• updating our well-being framework to make sure it has the latest, most relevant resources
• supporting our work around positive cultures to make sure workforce well-being forms part of a positive workplace
• running well-being information sessions, with topics reflecting what we learn from surveys, research and evidence, making sure people in the sector have the opportunity to learn new ideas and skills
• hosting another well-being week, making it a regular event where the sector can learn more about what can support well-being in the workplace
• developing the well-being network, so members can share best practice with each other and connect with peers
• developing and sharing ways of working that are based on evidence. This will improve the quality of work relationships, so people feel supported, valued and recognised.

To find out more about our work, or to join our well-being network, e-mail: wellbeing@socialcare.wales

You can find out more about workplace well-being on our well-being webpages.