Hiring foreign care workers ‘is only an interim solution’
EXPERTS CALL FOR SUSTAINABLE NHS STAFFING PLAN
PLANS to hire workers from countries – including India – to tackle the staffing crisis in Britain’s care homes have been branded as just a short-term solution by experts.
Ministers are considering sending NHS managers abroad to recruit thousands of nurses, and could make it easier for regulators to check overseas qualifications so that staff can start their role more quickly. There are 160,000 vacancies in social care as funding from local authorities has plummeted.
Nadra Ahmed, chair of the National Care Association, believes the workforce crisis and growing vacancies in the social care has thus far been ignored, but the growing impact on the NHS has put ministers’ minds into gear.
She told Eastern Eye: “This recruitment process must not be seen as the long term solution but an interim one while we work on a sustainable long-term option with our potential domestic workforce.
“We must remain mindful that colleagues who decide to make the journey to our shores must have their expectations managed too. Working in a different culture with differing legislative imperatives will have to be clear and transparent and appropriate training is key.
“There has to be a less bureaucratic approach to direct recruitment for providers to eliminate the extortionate costs incurred through recruitment agents and no guarantees at the quality of the candidates.”
A government source said a market engagement exercise has been launched to consider if a specialised and expert international recruitment operation would help with hiring overseas staff.
Discussions are believed to be at an early stage and no final decisions have been made on size, scale or whether to proceed. The aim would be to reduce bureaucracy and ensure timely, efficient, safe and effective overseas recruitment to meet a need in a specific sector.
Professor Gurch Randhawa is from the University of Bedfordshire, which is developing an outreach scheme to make the social care sector more diverse.
He told Eastern Eye: “There is an urgent need to address the shortage of social care staff in the UK.
“It is understandable that the government is seeking to solve the workforce crisis by recruiting from overseas, including south Asian countries such as India. However, this policy is unsustainable in the long term, and the government needs to ensure they increase the social workforce from within the UK itself by reaching out to all ethnic communities and improving pay and conditions.”
Care home Palms Row Health Care in Sheffield, Yorkshire, said last year it was planning to recruit staff from India. The firm said it was considering the move over the government’s “no jab, no job” rule for workers in the sector. All care home workers and anyone entering a care home need to be doublejabbed against Covid unless they are medically exempt under the rules.
Ramesh Verma, founder of the Ekta Project charity which supports Asian elders in London, said: “It is a good idea to have people, we need them. But they should be trained on the policies and procedures of this country, and on politeness and dignity of old people and respect. Training is very important, a refresher course and having a mentor.”
Verma added: “When I was in hospital last year during the peak of Covid, I saw new staff join from other countries – they have no clue of the system here. They are trained in India or Pakistan, but things are different here. Some were rude and I did complain.
“For 32 people on a ward, it was just two [staff ] day and night.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are incredibly grateful to all our hard-working care staff and are doing all we can to help them continue to offer the highest standards of care.
“Our new international recruitment taskforce is considering innovative ways to boost staffing numbers within health and adult social care. As part of this, we will work with the sector and recruitment experts to examine how to recruit staff from overseas more effectively into adult social care.”
The plan comes weeks after concerns were expressed over NHS staffing in England. An analysis of workforce figures found the health service may be becoming over-reliant on recruits from abroad.
Figures from NHS Digital showed the share of healthcare staff recruited from overseas almost doubled between 2014 and 2021.
Around one-third of doctors joining the health service in 2021 came from countries overseas, a rise of 18 per cent from 2014.
People applying for a Health and Care Worker visa need to have enough money to pay the application fee and have at least £1,270 in their bank balance unless exempt. Applicants need to have had the money available for at least 28 days in a row. The standard application fee for up to three years is £247 per person, and £479 per person for more than three years.