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?

You clearly don't care about the welfare of the vulnerable.

A few years ago I was involved in shortlisting for a clinical psychologist post with over 200 applicants, some applications were ridiculous but you can imagine it took a lot of work to shortlist.

Only 70% of the shortlisted confirmed they would attend for an interview and out of those, only 50% turned up for interview, and the appointed person initially accepted than called a few days later to say they had had a preferable offer.

It was a newly-qualified position for those just out of post-grad which are posts usually at a premium, hence the number of applicants but as we had to make interview time and space for all the shortlisted (as often, people don't confirm an interview but turn up anyway), it was a couple of days of clinician time and clinical space wasted.

It’s not just care work. Social work, Nursing , teaching are tough low paid jobs, recruitment has been global for many decades because we can’t recruit here. People come here and bring their families, they are low paid so are eligible for Benefits and use health and social care. Basically it’s a Ponzi scheme.
And interesting that for some jobs pay apparently needs to be high to get the “right” people, but not others.

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?

Another alternative is assisted dying. I don't support AD, because I believe that (1) it will be introduced (2) initially with good safeguards (3) over time these will be watered down (4) people who are elderly / keep poor health will be at greatest risk, especially if they can't afford their own care, or care is not available. It terrifies me

Parents are not allowed in as dependants on a health and care worker visa.

IF the migrant then gets indefinite leave to remain some years down the line and IF they then meet the incredibly strict criteria, then they can enter as family members. But they cannot enter as dependants and count towards the statistics of how many dependants come with someone on their initial visa.

I think some of the context might have been lost as this is a quote of a quote. A previous poster had read a stat on Reddit that successful dependent visas for all immigrants averaged 3 per immigrant in a specific quarter, but Zimbabwean immigrants had 10 per immigrant in the same time period.

So I was saying that the first stat was plausible (I haven't personally verified it), but the second did not sound believable as it it logistically unlikely to have that number of applicable dependents.

'Vocation' has been used to kick the shit out of all public sector workers for years.

Justifying low pay, poor working conditions, trauma, violence, and work outside working hours and pay.

I had a vocation but 30 years in, I do what i'm paid for and that's it.

And what i've observed in those 30 years is that often, the workers with a vocation are the most effected by stress, mental illness and trauma and often, burn out quicker.

You don't need a vocation to care for people. You can and often should, treat it like a job like any other. Care, be professional, take pride in your work, do all of your duties and be kind to your service users and colleagues. That's it.

The same goes for any other job.

Yes, I appreciate what you are saying, but that is not the point I am making.

Forcing unemployed people into being carers, as pp is advocating, is not likely to result in care workers who take pride in their work, do all of their duties and are kind service users and colleagues.

It also facilitates temporary migration. About 15 or 16 or so years ago I sponsored an old friend from a developing country to come here for a masters degree to further her career. She needed my sponsorship and promise to ensure she returned home and didn’t become dependant on the state to get a visa. If she hadn’t needed that sponsorship and her husband and child had been able to come with her then they probably would have stayed. Instead, she went home, where she has had a hugely successful career and made a real and beneficial impact in her own country. She had even won international prizes for her work, which she would not have had the opportunity to win in the U.K. The benefits of temporary migration for economic development in poorer countries are vast, whereas permanent migration causes a brain drain.

@Happyasarainbow sorry - message above was meant to be a reply to you.

Do you think people coming from abroad see it as a vocation or just a job that pays money they can send home?

As someone who worked in care when young, and again recently, I have some views on this!

Firstly it's bonkers, in the short term at least, to stop migrants from coming to do these jobs. Ideally we get to a place where we don't need them, but we're not there yet. As a PP said, something where people can come for a few years but then go back to their country makes sense. I thought that was how it already worked tbh, as an Indian friend who was working in care had to leave after a couple of years as she didn't earn over £40,000 (they put this amount up fairly recently).

There IS an issue with carers who just want a job in the UK, rather than actively wanting to be carers. However IME this was worse 20 years ago when it was people coming from central and eastern Europe. For whatever reason, the carers I've worked with more recently, from Africa, have been generally good.

It's not just the pay that discourages people, it's the shift patterns and so on. Higher pay would be a sort of compensation for that - or mean people could earn enough working fewer hours so easier to arrange childcare or whatever else is making it too hard now.

I think another thing that may have contributed is this idea of people staying in their own homes where possible. I know why it's done, but it's reached the point where that means substandard care in other ways. My last care job was in domiciliary care. I don't know exactly how it's funded but I'm assuming it's by hours of care provided. I doubt the travel time is factored in. So although the company has to pay travel time, they got around it by saying if there was more than 30 mins between calls it counted as a break. Even if it took 25 mins to drive to the next client (and don't get me started on the carers who are walking between shifts!). There would be gaps in the timetable too, so even if you got an actual break, you're just hanging around parked somewhere for 45 mins, too frequently to need a break, or a break that long (and 20+ mins drive from home). This all meant you could be at work from say 7 am until 2 pm but only get paid for 5 hours. Carers should get paid the length of their shift, but presumably if there are not clients the whole time, the company isn't getting the funds to pay them.

There were so many other issues, but they may be company specific. One is that we weren't guaranteed hours so you'd suddenly not have enough money to live on one week (bonkers when other staff are overwhelmed and would gladly give up a client or two). This included still being at work the normal times, but finding your shift rota full of holes with all the unpaid "breaks".

Obviously some of this stuff isn't relevant to nursing homes, but I've had enough of the care sector. I struggled with changing shift patterns, the physical nature of the job gets harder for older or pregnant people. I've seen really good carers leave for these reasons.

I will say that anyone who thinks people should just do these jobs as a last resort should try actually doing it themselves and see how they fare before judging others.

I've gone to the data set.

In Q4 of 2024, there were 4,904 health and care worker applications granted.

That included 407 Zimbabweans, 8 of whom were GPs and 41 of whom were social workers, although the majority were care workers or senior care workers (310 total).

For interest, other high numbers included

65 nurses from the Philippines
156 GPs from Pakistan
134 GPs from Nigeria
17 specialist medical practitioners from Italy
23 dentists from Iran
407 carers from India (the highest number in any one category) as well as 205 nurses and 248 GPs
13 mental health nurses from Eswatini and
99 GPs and 37 specialist medical practitioners from Egypt

Out of 4,904 in total, Zimbabweans represented less than 10%. So I remain very unconvinced about that Reddit statistic.

How so?

I don't know. Some may, some may not.

But that has nothing to do with the issue of telling unemployed people they must become carers or lose their benefits. Which is what pp is advocating.

Why?

Work is work. And if people are 'forced' into employment they need to do what it takes to continue in that employment and receive payment.

And that's been the same for all immigrant workers for decades. I don't agree with the virtue signalling PP who suggest that immigrant workers see low paid are work as a privilege so are wonderful workers.

If that was the case, there's plenty of low-paid care work in their countries of origin that would be a privilege for them to do.

I've known some absolutely wonderful human beings that just happen to be immigrant workers working in care and some complete assholes who I wouldn't entrust with the care of a hamster. Same goes for non-immigrant workers.

And 'care work' without any qualifications has led to a lot of immigrant workers seeking residency in the UK and it being granted, when it just led employers to pay poorer salaries so the workers are claiming other benefits so taking more from the UK system then they are contributing. and often some workers making a lot of money from e.g agency work with limited skills.

Which is why the government is now having to take this approach.

But if there are fears that a low-paid unemployed UK worker will provide poorer care than an immigrant worker, I think that's unfounded and just a bizarre idea since immigrant workers in care with no professional qualifications aren't coming to the UK because of their love of low-paid care-work, they're coming here because it's a way to access a perceived better life, not because it's their vocation.

I remember the looks of bemusement from management when I enquired how it is humanly possible for me to end one shift in Maida Vale at 3.3O and being expected to start another in Queen's Park at 3.40.
Much worse were the looks I got when I suggested, as I live South of the River that I be allocated the Pimlico 8.pm- 9.pm shift instead of the 8.pm -9.pm arse end of Harrow Road shift.

And let's not talk about the sanctified non British workers who often did not turn up for a two person shift as they were working at that time for another agency! The expectation was to keep quiet, or else!
The average Brit would be an idiot to do care work.

However, as a second generation child of Windrush immigrants, the whole experience did lead me to unpick the lie my parents' generation of immigrants were told by middle class Labour and Tories.....that the then White working class did not want to work....whilst leaving off the last bit "for shit money and conditions , especially after fighting a war and Britain looking like it was on the losing side up until even the 1990s...."
Now that we have even fifth generation non White working class that same half truth is still being trotted out by the same types who think that born and bred lower class Brits of all races should be legging it to do drudge work for shit pay and conditions as if the lower classes have no idea of Western Human Rights entitlement.

There are whole industries in the UK, all in plain sight that are objectively exploitative by all measures and the care industry is one.

Go and look at who various UK governments have allowed in the country to get rich off the backs of mostly other immigrants in the care industry and the hotel cleaning industry.
One set are Commonwealth derived, the other "EU freedom of movement" derived.
Both are wholly over represented in owning the agencies supplying the workers in these industries.

I don’t get the brain drain argument. It treats people as the property of the country they happened to be born in.

We could pay care workers more, although I think people's magical thinking about our dependency ratios and what this does to care may not yet have got us to the stage where we'd accept what would need to be done to facilitate it being a decent wage. But let's say we did. I'm still not convinced it would be particularly popular, simply because of the nature of the work.

It's inherently inflexible, needs doing in set places at fixed times, and it still has to get done on days most people don't choose to work. It involves dealing with bodily fluids and difficult behaviour. There are inevitably going to be other jobs that are less effort for comparable reward, especially when we have a tight labour market where workers have more choices. There isn't a reservoir of currently unused, affordable UK labour waiting to be deployed wherever wider society might find it most convenient.

I don't think most people, anywhere on the political spectrum, have fully grappled with what it means to have had TFR below replacement rate for over half a century.

White collar work requires a socialisation, respect for authority and conformity and compromise that increasingly does not seem to be a prioritised tenet in British parenting/culture.

I may not always get resolution, but I have never suffered a lack of politeness from a foreign based call centre, for example.

The lack of articulation and directness of tone in the average Brit is shocking.

Simple things like that will have to be dealt with in order to prepare a workforce fit for an economy dependant on White Collar work.

Qualifications without standards is the definition of fuckry.

It’s not intended that way. It’s quite widely used. Countries invest in their populations ( whether through government spending or parental support). They need a good percentage of them to grow up to drive the economy so that the country prospers and the next generation do well. If everyone talented leaves permanently then they can’t achieve this and they get stuck in a dependency cycle of relying on international aid and on money sent home by relatives working overseas. It’s not a good outcome for anyone. By contrast, if a country’s citizens can gain valuable expertise overseas and bring them home then the whole population benefits, the country is elevated and becomes a more desirable place to live with better opportunities. You can see this in Vietnam, which has gone from being one of the poorest countries in Asia to a middle income country with a burgeoning middle class who enjoy a first world standard of living.

Well, not quite 'not a good outcome for anyone'. You've left the outcomes for and views of the workers themselves out of the equation, which rather proves the poster's point! Them being able to leave permanently may very well be their best outcome.

I quite understand why the countries concerned would rather be able to benefit from their skilled worker citizens, particularly the ones they've invested in. But I think a better way to put it would be that there are competing interests amongst the different parties. An individual worker might be more concerned with having what they consider to be as good a life as possible than they are with changing the flow of international aid.

My other half trains carers.

The majority of the students from overseas are incredibly diligent and work crazy-hard for their qualifications, and get much better results. Not only that, most of them have better written English than most of the native-born carers. Often, they're also vastly over-qualified for the role, but they also tend to stay in their roles at least long enough to come back for their senior qualifications a year or two later.

It's the British students who make up 95% of the ones who plagiarise their work, shortcut it with ChatGPT or just plain don't bother to turn in their work or show up.

And those are the British people who wanted the job enough to go for it. Trying to funnel people who actively don't want to be there into care homes is just a recipe for disaster.

Keir Starmer said that the immigration policies and reform of welfare policies are linked. The long term unemployed with no health or disability are a minority.

The biggest welfare reform is disability. So those that used to receive PIP but now don’t due to the 4 point rule will be forced to work as they will loose potentially thousands per year. I could almost get on board with some form of low social/physical requirement supported by appropriate staff trial of work for the benefit of those potentially losing PIP. To see if work was a possibility. If it worked all good. If not, evidence of continuation of PIP. Obviously there are some for whom trial is clearly inappropriate.

The plan appears to be reduce overseas recruitment of the able bodied and force those that previously successfully claimed disability benefit before goal posts were moved to care for the most vulnerable in care homes. The wages will be low, the costs high, the profits high.

The young disabled or otherwise vulnerable looking after the elderly disabled or otherwise vulnerable. Forget the pay. You could pay millions and it would not enable some young and otherwise disabled to look after themselves (this is why they need support) let alone vulnerable others.

Would you be happy for your parents to pay thousands per month to be cared for indigenous disabled or otherwise vulnerable staff who are forced to do this because they have lost benefits and to keep immigrants out or cared for by able bodied ‘foreign’ staff. It will cost the same financially.

I feel like I am living in a topsy turvy world.

Agree @PocketSand. This is the sort of magical thinking I was talking about. There's no mechanism by which we can magic up homegrown workers, and cutting PIP certainly isn't it.