AIBU to think banning new international recruitment of staff for care homes is bonkers? [Title edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

[Locutus2000]

The latest Labour lunacy chasing the coat-tails of Reform.

"Care homes will be prevented from recruiting staff from abroad as part of an overhaul of rules to drive down net migration, Yvette Cooper has said.
In a change that will concern employers in the sector, the home secretary said providers should instead seek to employ foreign staff who have already come to the country or extend existing visas.

It is part of a preview of wider plans to be announced by Cooper on Monday designed to reduce net migration to the UK."

"In a series of interviews on Sunday, Cooper said the government would not set a figure for net migration but would target recruitment in lower-skilled sectors.

Speaking to Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Cooper said: “We’re going to introduce new restrictions on lower-skilled workers, so new visa controls, because we think actually what we should be doing is concentrating on the higher-skilled migration and we should be concentrating on training in the UK.

“New requirements to train here in the UK to make sure that the UK workforce benefits, and also we will be closing the care worker visa for overseas recruitment.”

Asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg where care homes would recruit staff from, Cooper said companies should recruit from a pool of people who came as care workers in good faith but had been “exploited” by unscrupulous employers.
“Care companies should be recruiting from those workers. They can also extend existing visas. They could recruit as well from people who are on other visas, who are already here. But we do think it’s time to end that care worker recruitment from abroad,” she said.

While Cooper declined to set a specific target for net migration, she said ministers believed changes to certain visas could result in “up to 50,000 fewer lower-skilled visas” over the next year."

Care homes have been at breaking point for years, few Brits want to work in them and those that do often burn out rapidly. I did several years and couldn't do it again.

Surely care homes are exactly where immigrant labour is needed? What is the alternative, other than actually paying care staff properly and improving working conditions to the point people actually want to do it?

This is the problem - we've been saying this for literally decades yet nothing changes.

I dared to think Labour might sort it out but the political will seems lacking.

You really, really don't want those people forced into working with the vulnerable.

After they secure indefinite leave to remain they can request to bring family members in i believe

We should be doing this then, instead of allowing owners of care homes to rake it in while allowing their foreign staff to put up with this. Which they will do because their visa depends on their job. This is why Elon Musk wants workers from India, so he can work them to the bone under the threat of having their visa revoked, because he can't do that to US workers. We should not be encouraging that behaviour here just because employers want cheap, desperate labour from abroad.

If they can't recruit from abroad, they are going to have to.

Are these the people we want looking after vulnerable children and adults?

The reason people are often long term unemployed is because they're unemployable. They would either be off sick a lot of the time or unable to do some of the basics of the job due to adjustments needed.

No you're right I wouldn't but I think they will start putting all these kinda things in place to make it all come together.

They just randomly said a lot of people can no longer claim benefits and had to get jobs so its seems they are now trying to put things in place to create these jobs for them to go into.

In the end they will get fired and get no benefits which might make them eventually rely on themselves but it will be a rough ride to get there.

Anyway I'm going off subject, just my thoughts x

Nope definitely not, I imagine they will be fired pretty quickly but then can't go back to the benefit system, not sure how it will pan out tbh x

A lot of inappropriate behaviour is often because of LD, ND, dementia, other disorders. Children's homes are the same, regular allegations, assaults, criminal damage, racial abuse. Usually from the most vulnerable children with extremely challenging beahviour and a raft of disorders.

What is your solution, police intervention each time? Banning the person from their care home? To go where?

Get fired for what?

I've been a care worker for over 30 years. It's vanishingly rare to get fired from care work.

You are absolutely not BU. But hey, maybe all those twonks who think Farage and his acolytes are the answer will be rushing to apply. I'm sure they're just champing at the bit to do physical hard graft for incapacitated older folk with a range of issues.

I can only see one result from this and it is not good, especially for those without big fat salaries to pay over the top care home fees.

I sometimes wonder why the government doesn't just take all those of us who are older, disabled, suffering chronic conditions or otherwise somehow "less" round the back and shoot us rather than this dreadful death of a thousand cuts.

Hopefully this will inspire the care industry to improve working conditions. Especially shift patterns. Many insist on 12 hour shifts with no fixed days (3 days on. 3 days off) which makes it almost impossible for working mothers. Lots of variation of pay and extras such as free food on shift, unsociable hours pay not to mention constant understaffing.

As another lady said people who are long term unemployed are generally unemployable so if they are going to be the ones used to fill these positions a lot of them don't have the attitute to hold down a job.
I'm pretty sure if the local scumbag who no longer can claim benefits and managed to get a careworker job they would be a whole list of reasons they can get themselves fired.
As I said I don't want to go off topic, I just thought there was a clear link to stopping low skilled jobs being filled from overseas and long term unemployed being forced back into work.

They will get fired. We've known of a number of care home staff (childrens homes) who lose their jobs after poor practice or inappropriate behaviour. Unclear if they then go on to other homes of course, but I wouldnt have thought so given they wont have a clear DBS

Once they have ILR they can - but it takes at least 5 years to get, and once they have it, their family members are subject to the same restrictions as a British person trying to bring family members. They have to meet the minimum income threshold - £29,000 to bring a spouse, plus an extra £3,800 per child. Adult children are not eligible. So if you want to bring a spouse and three children, you have to demonstrate that you are earning £40,400. Plus of course they have to pay the NHS surcharge and the spouse has to get a pre-entry English language qualification. Not as simple as "they just bring a family" at all - the lower rate for a care worker visa is £25k, which would not entitle them to bring even a spouse, never mind a family, after they gain ILR.

Almost nobody gets to bring grandma; the requirements for that are that she must be in need of long-term personal care on a daily basis as a result of old age, illness or disability, AND that the care required is not available or not affordable in the home country, AND that they can be financially supported in the UK. For those who can afford to financially support grandma in the UK, it's going to be nearly impossible to show that they can't afford to send money home to support her care needs there, while those who can't afford to support her there plainly can't meet the requirement that they can do so here.

I saw this on Reddit politics. Is it not true? (Genuine q, I don’t know)

What needs to happen is this work needs to be respected, its qualifications enhanced and respected, with clear pathways to pay increments, promotions and pensions. It needs to be paid properly, it's genuinely skilled and difficult work and many, many of us would not be up to it.

My late DM was in a care home, I met lots of new migrant care workers, including some young guys who were nice but really unsuited to the work, they were open about this being purely a route into UK work and leave to stay, after their minimum term was up they would move on to other work - very few ever intended to stay in care work. The turnover in this group was staggering.

The local care workers were leaving after many years in care work because they couldn't make ends meet and weren't supported. The majority went into retail or cleaning: my friend earns at least twice as much as a self-employed cleaner than she did as a care worker.

The reason care workers are paid so badly and disregarded is that they have traditionally been working-class women, mothers working unreliable shifts who daren't be off sick.

If the private companies' business model doesn't work unless they pay rock bottom, then the government will need to take action. The current migrant route via care work does not provide the best care for vulnerable people.

The care crisis is only going to get worse. I'm entirely against people trying to get out of care fees but I understand people see the fees as arbitrary or unfair depending on circumstances and a fair system would force everyone to pay proportionately more for social care and the NHS. I hope Labour are going to really step up.

It's not entirely true @bge no. Because "health and care worker" visas encompass all sorts of NHS workers from surgeons to biochemists to clinical psychologists to pharmacists, as well as care workers and senior care workers. Obviously a surgeon will be paid vastly more than a care worker.

The ones who are not permitted to bring dependents are care workers and senior care workers.

So while the figures may well be correct in terms of how many health and care workers were recruited from Zimbabwe in 2024 (I don't know - I haven't checked!), it's far from accurate to say that the dependents all attach to minimum wage social care workers.

Does that make sense?

Here's the current list of who's covered by the broad field of "health and care" visa:

Your job must be in one of the following occupation codes to qualify for the Health and Care Worker visa:

• 1171: health services and public health managers and directors
• 1231: health care practice managers
• 1232: residential, day and domiciliary care managers and proprietors
• 2113: biochemists and biomedical scientists
• 2114: physical scientists
• 2211: generalist medical practitioners
• 2212: specialist medical practitioners
• 2221: physiotherapists
• 2222: occupational therapists
• 2223: speech and language therapists
• 2224: psychotherapists and cognitive behaviour therapists
• 2225: clinical psychologists
• 2226: other psychologists
• 2229: therapy professionals not elsewhere classified
• 2231: midwifery nurses
• 2232: registered community nurses
• 2233: registered specialist nurses
• 2234: registered nurse practitioners
• 2235: registered mental health nurses
• 2236: registered children’s nurses
• 2237: other registered nursing professionals
• 2251: pharmacists
• 2252: optometrists
• 2253: dental practitioners
• 2254: medical radiographers
• 2255: paramedics
• 2256: podiatrists
• 2259: other health professionals not elsewhere classified
• 2461: social workers
• 3111: laboratory technicians
• 3211: dispensing opticians
• 3212: pharmaceutical technicians
• 3213: medical and dental technicians
• 3219: health associate professionals not elsewhere classified
• 6131: nursing auxiliaries and assistants
• 6132: ambulance staff (excluding paramedics)
• 6133: dental nurses
• 6135: care workers and home carers
• 6136: senior care workers

They sound worried about losing votes now.

The problem is that care home owners are greedy. They charge truly exorbitant fees, and pay staff minimum wage. I have not one ounce of sympathy for any care home owner who moans they can't get staff. Pay more money, get better quality staff. Its honestly not rocket science, or even complex economics.

This pretty much.

Yes - thank you

In fact @bge 10 dependants per health and care worker sounded inconceivable, so I went back and checked, and it's false.

From here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2024/why-do-people-come-to-the-uk-work

"In 2024, there was an average of 3 dependants per main applicant on the ‘Health and Care Worker’ route. By contrast, those on ‘Skilled Worker’ visas brought an average of one dependant per main applicant. However, the number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ dependants between April and December 2024 was 77% lower than the same 9 months in 2023. This decrease in grants to dependents is likely influenced by falls in grants to main applicants since July to September 2023, and the recent policy change for care worker dependants."

(The prohibition on care workers bringing dependents was introduced in March 2024)

Nobody can bring their grandma, or even their mum. even for British citizens in high paying jobs with a parent abroad, it's almost impossible to bring the over as the immigration rules have been tightened so much. Can you please point me into the direction of the applicable legislation which would allow a care worker to bring granny over?