Caring Cymru: Why recognising care is the foundation of a just nation

Dr Hade Turkmen, Interim Head of Oxfam Cymru

If you want to know the strength of a nation, don’t look at its GDP – look at how it cares. How it supports its people, its communities, its future generations, and the planet we all depend on.

In an age defined by inequality, conflict, and climate breakdown, a nation’s commitment to care reveals what it truly values.

Care is universal and indispensable. It is the unseen infrastructure that keeps Wales going – from our homes to our communities to our country as a whole. Yet it remains one of the least recognised, least supported, and least rewarded types of work in our economy. Too often, caring for someone comes at a steep personal cost: to people’s wellbeing, their incomes, and their long‑term security.

That failure to value care is a direct driver of poverty. Around one in four people in Wales live in poverty, including one in three children, while our care system is under severe strain. Women are disproportionately pushed out of paid work by caring responsibilities. Hundreds of thousands provide unpaid care, many living in poverty themselves, while paid care workers remain undervalued despite doing work our society cannot function without.

Care is not merely a sentimental concern. It is the foundation of a fair, resilient, and sustainable economy. Traditional growth strategies cannot address Wales’s deep inequalities. We need an economy that measures what truly matters: wellbeing, dignity, equality, and the health of people and planet. That starts with recognising care—paid and unpaid—as central to our shared national prosperity.

A Caring Cymru begins with a simple truth: care is not a cost to be minimised; it is an investment in a just nation and a resilient economy.

Care: The Hidden Infrastructure of Our Economy

Every day across Cymru, thousands of people care for children, older relatives, disabled family members, friends, and neighbours. This quiet, constant work underpins our entire society. In 2023, Carers Wales estimated the annual value of unpaid care at £10.6 billion, almost half of the Welsh Government’s entire budget and equivalent to the cost of running the NHS. And that contribution has only grown since.

Despite its scale, unpaid care work – whether for adults or children, or for those with and without additional support needs – remains almost invisible in our economic thinking. Yet if all those providing unpaid care stopped tomorrow, Wales would face an immediate social and economic crisis. We simply couldn’t replace this hidden workforce. A truly caring economy would therefore recognise care as the essential infrastructure it is.

Failing to properly value care fuels inequality, deepens poverty, and weakens Wales. But investing in care would do the opposite. It would strengthen preventative healthcare and reduce pressure on the NHS. It would create good quality jobs, and in large numbers. It would ensure people can access the care they need, when they need it. It would give every child a fair start in life and parents the flexibility to participate in the workforce. It would help build a society where everyone can thrive—not just cope.

Care Matters to All of Us

When essential care work is undervalued, the people who provide it are pushed into poverty or forced out of paid employment. This isn’t only unjust – it is also economically short-sighted. No nation can thrive while neglecting the very work that enables all other work to happen.

Oxfam Cymru’s message is clear: social justice means tackling poverty and inequality by dismantling the barriers that stop people living full, secure, dignified lives – and fragmented, underfunded care systems are among the biggest of those barriers.

But Cymru has choices. Our devolved social care system, our powerful civil society, our commitment to wellbeing, and our deep traditions of community solidarity give us strong foundations. We can lead the way in recognising care as fundamental to both a fair society and a resilient economy.

Towards a Caring Cymru

To make care a central pillar of our economy and society, we need transformative action:

• Value care as essential work and a social infrastructure.

Recognise and value the labour of unpaid carers for those with additional support needs, remove profit from social care, reinvest in communities, and ensure the care workforce is fairly paid, secure, and able to progress.

• Deliver a joined‑up, long‑term vision for care.

Create a Welsh care strategy and service that unites health, social care, childcare, community support and economic policy – and fund and coordinate local authorities to deliver it.

• Design services around people, not processes.

Put dignity, independence and prevention first. Guarantee “Care security” – affordable, high‑quality care throughout life.

• Make childcare universal, affordable and accessible.

Treat childcare as anti‑poverty infrastructure – giving every child a fair start and enable parents, especially women, to work. Chid poverty and women’s poverty are inseparable.

A Call to Build a Caring Cymru Together

Cymru is ready for this shift. We have a proud tradition of solidarity; but creating a truly Caring Cymru demands two things.

First, public recognition.
Care must be understood not as a private issue, but as a national priority and vital social infrastructure that underpins a thriving Cymru.

Second, bold actions from government.
We need a programme that puts care at the centre of equality, wellbeing, and economic renewal.

A Caring Cymru is not only possible. It is within reach.

Together, we can build a nation that truly values the people who care, the people who are cared for.