Professor Hayes will present new research, undertaken during the pandemic, showing that care safety and job quality in care settings are inseparable. The findings point to failures in the regulation of care provision. Job quality indicators, highly relevant to the objective of care safety, were being ignored or marginalised by providers and inspectors. Professor Hayes will make the case that existing regulatory law provides the social care sector with a framework of sector-specific employment standards. Better understanding of the potential of regulatory law could help organisations that represent either employers or workers to improve terms and conditions of work as an inseparable element of the quality of care.