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?

The issue with recruitment is easy to explain...Poor pay and conditions.

Too many employers got used to relying on immigrants so they could keep wages low and profits high.

The care, retail and hospitality sectors need to start treating and rewarding employees correctly and they won't have so many problems recruiting local people.

Yes. As mad as not nallowing nurseries to charge for nappies, food, trips etc. etc. This government is going to decimate the care sector in its entirety

No they are not you are misunderstanding the statistics!
The vast majority of care homes need to be at or over 90% capacity to BREAK EVEN. There is no money in care anymore.
Ive worked in care for more than a decade. Care home businesses are going bust all the time. There really is no money in it. Councils do not pay what it costs to keep someone in a care home. People want more and better services all the time.
Go and watch the series Ed Balls did on care homes a few years ago to see the true picture.

Many homes would love to pay more but just don’t have the money

This is absolutely true.

No reasonable society should be allowing people to profit from some of the most vulnerable people.

The very simple answer is for Labour to make all care homes not for profit. Then the obscene profits being made at present can be ploughed into staff wages. And they are obscene, I know someone who runs multiple homes and boasts frequently about her diamonds and her multiple houses.

When I'm older, if in a care home I want a well educated, well paid. motivated, kind person looking after me. Not someone who has to take the job to earn a crust.

We should all want that for our elderly instead of importing American me first values. Of course Labour have to be very very careful not to lose votes to reform. Nigel Farage is a misogynistic monster like Trump. He's also a child of privilege and deeply rascist. He is doing exactly what Trump had done, appealed to the very worst nature of his base. And now we all watch as American society disintegrates into an authoritarian hate land.

Call me old fashioned but I'd rather pay more tax and live in a fairer, happier Scandinavian style society where people have generally better health, happiness and educational outcomes than somewhere Reform envisages. A mini US with low quality food lacking freedom and diversity run by someone only interested in fame money and power.

You cant train empathy into someone.
Care work is so much more than practical stuff like feeding, dressing and cleaning. It is being able to read people and listen to them. Know how to de-escalate things and put people at ease.
No one would want their relative in a care home being cared for by someone forced to be there.

I know I could not work in care. I would not pass the DBS check anyway.

Need good training in the same way as people are trained properly for other caring roles

Unfortunately for this to happen then councils will have to start paying closer to what it actually costs. And for this to happen then central government will need to provide more council funding. And for this to happen our taxes will have to rise - which will be complained about by everyone.

Care homes can be good employers and offer decent wages. However they aren’t ones taking council paid for residents. Like most areas of employment, there’s good and bad. My DM was paying £5,500 a month a year ago. No dementia. The home had a few staff from “ abroad” but they were either born here or came as younger people. One was the wonderful deputy manager. If a place is rock bottom fees, it’s rock bottom wages.

If owners take a risk in setting up a business, they should make a profit. Or why bother? Around here the council has no homes - they are all run by a not for profit charity. This option was open to all councils in terms of running homes. Paying staff comes from fees - either from residents or council via contracts for individuals.

If we accept we need homes, telling people they cannot make a profit is likely to close the businesses. My local sheltered housing residence is being sold. Owned by a charity. With NI and other rising costs, it’s difficult to keep going. We need to go with the Teresa May idea of an insurance policy.

People prefer benefits to this type of work and you do need to be a special person. No doubt about that. But if you pay higher wages, who pays? Not for profit will turn into a huge loss.

You can't train empathy and understanding into people.

You don't need to be empathetic, you just need to follow the processes.

I agree the services struggle to break even.

But the problem is people without empathy don’t follow the processes. Winterbrook court anyone? And that’s not the only case!

Labour have already shown how little a fuck they give about those who need care.

The have no intention of improving pay and conditions.

Yeah because we really have 10 million genuinely disabled. And single mothers can and should work. Having kids doesn’t absolve you of responsibility of paying for yourself.

Ah ok. So a resident in a care home is little more than something you follow processes with?
I hope you dont work in care.

LBC are discussing this right now.

Again with the lower skilled nonsense. Proper carers are highly skilled. It's a tough job to do properly with compassion and empathy, and deserves to be recognised as such. Maybe if it was recognised as such and properly remunerated, more UK citizens would see it as a viable option. It should be integrated back into the health service too.

So nobody should pay for anything if they are ‘vulnerable’?
Care costs a lot of money to do well. Of course care homes should be making money. They are a business! Should supermarkets also stop making money because some of their customers are vulnerable? Why shouldn’t people who run businesses make a living?

Im genuinely interested in your answer because I run a both a care business and a business which sells a product based service. And I come up against this all the time! I Can scrape a living together by running my care business. But it is scraping by living hand to mouth. I want to be able to live a little - have a holiday, have some savings etc. But I’m constantly told that by putting my prices up I’m exploiting the vulnerable! By asking a fair price for my products exactly the same!

Meanwhile we have supermarkets making billions. Energy companies even more billions. Politicians having 10% pay rises!

Tell us you know nothing about caring eh?

Don't you need a DBS check to be a carer? A fair few probably couldn't get one.

Caring is physically very demanding, so they need to be fit, they need to be able to manage medication and follow strict procedures, so need to be literate and they need to be able to manage stress, tolerate being assaulted and insulted without batting an eyelid and they need the patience of a saint.

How many of that 10 million have the necessary skills and attributes to be carers?

And where do you get the figure of 10 million from, please?

Of course. Same as anyone.

What do you think of Labour’s plans?

Where are you getting the 10 million disabled figure from?

Yes, they have said 10 million people who could work, then say about 10 million genuinely disabled.
It is all froth.

Is English your first language?

It can be. I've been working in care for about 3 years now. Started off in cqc for a year then transfered to non cqc care work. The difference is massive.

Getting customers washed and ready is back breaking. Managing and adminisitering medication was horrific. Massive respect to those that do it. You don't need a degree though and you just need to do the basics. Most of the time you just need patience and act like you are listening.

40, 000 of them left the profession due to the Covid vaccine mandate Some of us on here pointed out the insanity of this mandate at the time and were yet again called granny killers