PSI Webinar to Mark the 2026 International Day of Care and Support: Valuing the Health and Care Workforce to Realize the Human Right to Care

Contextual background

The United Nations proclaimed that 29 October would be marked annually as the International Day of Care and Support in 2023. Since then, international organisations, governments, and a broad array of non-state actors have observed that day in recognition of the indispensable contribution of care and support to human rights, gender equality, sustainable development, and resilient societies. The journey to this proclamation and universal observance started with trade union action. In 2018, Public Services International (PSI), the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and other Global Union Federations covering the broad spectrum of care (including childcare, domestic work, etc.) met to address the need for greater visibility for care work and care jobs.

One of the key resolutions arrived at for doing this was to set aside a day in October for trade unions across the world to draw attention to care work, demand adequate investment in the sector and decent work for care workers. This was to take effect from 2019. That first observance was held alongside and as part of the 2019 World Day for Decent Work (WDDW) on 7 October. The unions subsequently resolved on 29 October with effect from 2020. By then, the world was in the grip of COVID-19, cementing global recognition of the pivotal place of care for humankind, with the care worker at its centre.

The 2026 observance offers an important opportunity to move beyond recognition towards reinforced action for adequate public investment, decent work, safe staffing, strong public systems, gender-transformative policies and meaningful worker participation in decisions that shape health and care services.

Rationale

PSI is the global union federation for public service workers and the leading organised global voice of health and care workers. PSI affiliates are at the heart of the lived experience, collective power, and policy demands of workers in over one hundred and fifty countries across the world. And, as PSI, we bring the voice health and care workers to regional, and international forums, helping to shape the global norms and regulations which necessary to safeguard decent work for care workers, and the wellbeing of the populations whom we deliver care to as a public service.

Thus, PSI mobilised its affiliates across the globe to ensure the realities and yearnings of care workers were captured in the ILO General Survey on decent work in the care economy in 2021-2022, with a focus on international labour instruments on nursing personnel and domestic workers. With the indepth analyses of our submissions, we expanded the conversation, successfully advocating for the recognition of the integral relations of health and the broad gamut of social care and the need for the social reorganisation of care. Following the outcomes of the General Survey, we also played a leading role in the General Discussion on Decent Work and the Care Economy at the 112th Session of the International Labour Conference (ILC) in 2024.

As the only body of organised labour in official relations with the World Health Organization (WHO), PSI also contributes significantly to the norms-setting process for the health and care workforce, within the sphere of global health. In this light, we were part of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Integrating the Health and Care Workforce (IHCWF) which worked over the last three years to create “global policy options to progressively integrate health and social care systems”. The outcome of this work, which the WHO will launch on 22 April, will be crucial in the coming period for the “development, management and support of care workers – towards an integrated health and care workforce”.

This webinar will therefore build on PSI’s work in care over the years to frame the debate today, interrogate policy proposals and set out a worker-led agenda for “building sustainable care and support systems through decent work”, towards “realising the human rights of all those providing and requiring care and support.”

A centrepiece of the webinar will be the PSI launch of the WHO report arising from the work of the Technical Advisory Group on Integrating the Health and Care Workforce which would have been launched. The session will introduce the report’s evidence and policy options, bring them into dialogue with workers’ experience, and identify how unions can use the report to advance decent work, quality public services and stronger primary health care.

Objectives

• Mark the 2026 International Day of Care and Support by centring the rights, knowledge, and collective agency of health and care workers.
• Affirm PSI’s primary place as the global voice of health and care workers and strengthen affiliate visibility in international policy debates.
• Launch and discuss the WHO report developed through the Technical Advisory Group on Integrating the Health and Care Workforces from a trade union and public-services perspective.
• Help lay a firm base for translating its findings into priorities for organising, bargaining, social dialogue and advocacy, while building commitments to integrated public systems founded on decent work, gender equality and universal access.