Diverse opportunities

The care sector offers a wide range of jobs with varying responsibilities, specialisms and skillsets required. From doctors, nurses consultants and surgeons to therapists, social workers, housing support officers and administrators, you can find your niche easily and build a successful career. In the residential care industry, there are roles available at all levels of the management structure. Ours is an aging population, and with 418,000 people living in residential care across 21,000 care homes, there will always be a huge demand for qualified, talented care staff.

Strength in numbers

The NHS is the UK’s largest employer (and the world’s fifth largest) with around 1.5 million employees, making up 4.9% of the country’s working population. There are also around 112,000 care positions available across the country at any time, offering plenty of opportunities to work in this diverse sector. Demand for nurses is high, with 7.8 nurses in every 1,000 people and around 90,000 mental health nurses working in the UK in 2022 – a figure that has been steadily rising ever since.

Innovation and technology

The care sector is at the cutting edge of innovation and development in many different ways, such as medical discoveries, clinical trials and the use of IT to solve problems. Technology is changing the way we do things in the industry, with digital tools providing more and more support. Care Vision’s digital care management software offers a suite of apps and systems to help busy care home managers run their care facility, look after staffing requirements and monitor the safety and wellbeing of their residents.

Longer life, longer poor health

We may be living longer than ever before in the UK, but we are spending more years living with bad health. Average life expectancy these days is 79.5 years for males and 83.1 years for females. This places greater strain on us, our families and the healthcare sector as we work to keep up with more people’s health needs. Common health problems in England include lower back and neck pain, skin problems and depression. We can help protect our own future health by eating well, exercising, avoiding smoking and drinking to excess and looking after our mental wellbeing.

Money talks

It is a tough pill to swallow (pardon the pun), but a strong link exists between the amount of money you have and how good your long-term health will be. If you live in the more deprived areas of the UK, you can expect to live for less time – nine years fewer for men and seven years for women. This can be linked to eating less good quality food and having less access to healthy options such as fruit and vegetables. Also higher prevalence of smoking and drinking and higher levels of stress and anxiety.

Health is affected by climate change

This may seem like an obvious thing to say when it comes to mental health, as growing concern over the future of our planet is a common cause for feelings of anxiety and depression. However, the impacts of climate change can also affect physical health in a number of ways. Rising temperatures are making summer heatwaves more common, which can be dangerous to very young children and older people. Those with long-term health conditions and pregnant women can also find it harder to keep cool in more extreme temperatures. Climate change can also cause stormy weather, flash flooding and air pollution – all of which can pose serious threats to life.