Public dissatisfaction with social care down but still high

The King's Fund has published its analysis of the latest British Social Attitudes Survey. The British Social Attitudes Survey is a nationally representative study tracking public views on health and care since 1983. The survey measures overall public sentiment, not individual experiences of people using services.

Some key headlines for social care include:

• There's no statistically significant change in those saying they were 'very' or 'quite' satisfied with social care services. This remains low at 14%.
• The number of people saying that they are 'very' or 'quite' dissatisfied with services has decreased to 49% in 2025 from 53% in 2024. This is still higher than the levels of dissatisfaction we were seeing prior to the pandemic where dissatisfaction was lower than 40%.
• People who had contact with social care in the last 12 months, either for themselves or someone they knew, were more likely to report satisfaction or dissatisfaction than respondents with no contact with social care, who were more likely to say they were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.
• The top three priorities for social care selected were: 
  • Helpling people stay independent at home for as long as possible
  • Making social care more affordable to those who need it
  • Improving the quality of social care services
• 51% of respondents thought that taxes and spend on social care should be kept the same. 38% thought taxes should increase to increase spend on social care and 6% thought taxes should be reduced to reduce spend on social care.
• 45% of the public supported increasing taxes to spend more on the NHS, so support for social care related tax increases is lower than for the NHS.