Do you agree with the government's move to end international recruitment of care workers?
- No, the policy risks severe staff shortages for the sector. (71%, 2,065 Votes)
- Yes, the focus should be on strengthening and investing in the domestic workforce. (29%, 835 Votes)
Total Voters: 2,900
Loading ...The government will end the recruitment of care workers from abroad later this year, home secretary Yvette Cooper announced today.
Cooper told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that social care providers would no longer be able to recruit staff from abroad via health and care worker visas when the policy came into force.
Instead, they would need to draw on the domestic labour force, people on other immigration visas or the pool of overseas staff who had been left without a job after losing visa sponsorship.
The policy was confirmed in the government’s immigration white paper, published on Monday (12 May), which said the measure would reduce immigration by 7,000 a year.
The news has sparked alarm from social care bodies, who said international recruitment had been a “lifeline” for the sector in recent years and that the decision risked “extreme workforce shortages” and harm to disabled and older people.
Positive impact of sharp rise in overseas recruitment
In 2021, the then government relaxed immigration rules to allow providers to recruit senior care workers on the health and care worker visa, on the basis that they were a shortage occupation, extending this to all care workers the following year.
This enabled a sharp rise in international recruitment into social care from 2022-24 that drove a reduction in vacancy levels, from a record high of 164,000, in 2022, to 131,000 in 2024, and reduced turnover rates to their lowest level in a decade.
International recruits were also significantly less likely to take days off sick and more likely to have met the care certificate standards, which state basic expectations of care workers, than British staff, according to Skills for Care research.
Drop in number of new international staff
However, since 2024, the level of overseas recruitment has plummeted on the back of immigration restrictions introduced by the Conservatives, under which staff were prevented from bringing in family members with them when taking up jobs in the UK.
According to Skills for Care figures, about 11,000 people from overseas took up posts in English independent care providers in each quarter of 2024-25, down from 26,000 per quarter the previous year. This includes staff on health and care worker visas and those who have come through other immigration routes.
The Labour government tightened the system further last month, by preventing English providers from recruiting from abroad unless they had first tried to fill roles with overseas staff left without work because their employers had had their visa sponsorship licences revoked.
It also raised the minimum salary required for an overseas recruit to £25,000, or £12.82 an hour, above the national living wage (£12.21) that many care staff are paid.
But in its immigration white paper, the government has gone further by pledging to end overseas recruitment of care staff, as part of reforms to reserve skilled worker visas for graduate-level jobs in most cases.
For all other roles, recruitment from abroad would be “strictly time-limited”, granted only on the basis of strong evidence of shortages in critical roles and where employers were committed to increasing their numbers of domestic staff.
End to international recruitment into care sector
In her appearance on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Cooper said: “We’re going to change those rules this year to prevent the care worker visa from being used to recruit from abroad,” the home secretary said.
She said that instead, employers would have to rely on staff from the following groups:
- The domestic labour force;
- Existing staff on health and care worker visas, whose visas will continue to be extendable;
- People from abroad who are in the UK on other immigration routes, such as student, graduate or family visas, who would be able to apply to switch to a health and care worker visa
- The pool of workers brought left without a job because their employer’s sponsorship had been cancelled, including in cases of exploitation.
However, visa extensions and in-country switching of visas will only be permitted until 2028, though this would be kept under review, said the white paper.
Requirement to recruit from pool of displaced staff
In relation to the pool of displaced staff, Cooper told Kuennsberg: “There’s more than 10,000 people who came on a care visa where the sponsorship visa was cancelled, effectively they came to jobs that weren’t effectively here or were not of the proper standard.
“They are here and care companies should be recruiting from that pool of people, rather than recruiting from abroad. So we are closing recruitment from abroad.”
She said that this policy would be introduced alongside the planned fair pay agreement for adult social care. Under this, an Adult Social Care Negotiating Body would be set up to set pay and conditions for the sector, with the intent being that this will drive up salaries and make the sector more attractive for people from the UK.
Vacancies ‘largely driven by historic levels of poor pay’
In the white paper, the government said vacancies in social care were “largely driven by historic levels of poor pay and poor terms and conditions leading to low domestic recruitment and retention rates”.
It said it was committed to tackling these issues through the fair pay agreement, which would “empower worker, employer and other sector representatives to negotiate improvements in the terms of employment” and “move the UK away from a dependence on overseas workers to fulfil our care needs”.
Warning of ‘extreme workforce shortages’
However, provider leaders warned that the fair pay agreement was years away from implementation and the government had not allocated any funding to implementing it.
In the meantime, withdrawing the option of overseas recruitment risked “extreme workforce shortages” and harm to people needing care and support, said the Homecare Association.
Its chief executive, Jane Townson, added: “International recruitment is a lifeline for the home care sector, enabling us to provide vital support to older and disabled people in their own homes. Care providers are already struggling to recruit within the UK.
“We are deeply concerned the government has not properly considered what will happen to the millions of people who depend on care at home to live safely and independently.”
‘A crushing blow to an already fragile sector’
For fellow provider representative body Care England, chief executive Martin Green described the decision as “a crushing blow to an already fragile sector”.
Among other longstanding pressures, services are dealing with the impact of last month’s rise in employer national insurance contributions.
This will cost English independent adult social care providers an extra £2.8bn in 2025-26, according to think-tank the Nuffield Trust, with sector bodies warning that councils are not fully covering the increased costs for services they commission.
“For years, the sector has been propping itself up with dwindling resources, rising costs and mounting vacancies,” Green added.
“International recruitment wasn’t a silver bullet, but it was a lifeline. Taking it away now, with no warning, no funding, and no alternative, is not just short-sighted – it’s cruel.”
Sector faces ‘triple whammy’
The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) said that “cutting off this source of new workers without a plan about how to replace them domestically will worry many older and disabled people, their families and employers”.
President Jess McGregor added: “A shortage of care workers leads to a triple whammy of more reliance on agency staff who the person drawing on care won’t know and who the provider will need to pay much more for, more people – especially women – giving up paid work to care for their loved ones, and many people potentially missing out on care altogether.”
She urged the government to “commit to a workforce strategy which provides proper pay, career progression and training, comparable with the NHS”.
What workforce strategy said about immigration
Skills for Care produced a sector-led, 15-year workforce strategy for adult social care last year, which called for significant increases in pay and investment in training, to help the sector meet a projected need for 540,000 more staff by 2040, due to population ageing.
This proposed a transition plan to reduce reliance on overseas staff by supporting better domestic recruitment and retention.
However, it stressed that while such a plan was developed and implemented, “immigration policy should be mindful of the sector’s current need to recruit internationally”.
McGregor also called on ministers to “outline how the fair pay agreement for care workers will be funded and timescales for implementation”.
‘Social care would have collapsed long ago without overseas staff’
UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea said the NHS and social care “would have collapsed long ago without the thousands of workers who’ve come to the UK from overseas”.
Pointing to the sharp drop in the number of visas issued in the past year, she said care workers no longer wanted to come to the UK because of “hostile language towards migrants, the ban on bringing dependants and exploitation by unscrupulous employers”.
“The government must get on with making its fair pay agreement a reality and ensure social care is funded properly,” she added.
“So long as care wages stay barely above the legal minimum, employers will never be able to recruit the staff needed to deliver a national care service of which we can all be proud.”
Policy is ‘hugely risky’, warns think-tank
In its response, the Nuffield Trust said that “closing off international recruitment” without properly addressing the UK’s “poor” domestic supply of care workers was “hugely risky”, as care providers could not boost domestic recruitment “overnight”.
“While plans for a fair pay agreement for care workers show ambitions to make the sector a more attractive workplace for UK citizens, these reforms won’t kick in for years, so there is going to be a void where social care employers will struggle even more to fill vacancies,” said deputy director of policy Natasha Curry.
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Please will those who applied before the policy be considered when there is the need?
This is a poor policy. People in this country will not do the work, pay low, hours unsocial, they are better off on benefits. Add to it the drive to earn so many £s before can work here, will exclude many overseas care workers, many live in HMOs as only rent they can afford.
Basically, overseas care workers are being the scapegoat for those arriving on the boats who are not working, and a failed benefit system where it is financially not worth doing low paid work
Spot on!
Pay really ‘ high wages’ to the unemployed who want to work, but who don’t want to break their backs for a paltry pay packet – who would?
The Government can pay Care Workers half their salaries, if it comes to that, as they do harder work than them.
They find millions upon millions out of the blue for the HS2 scheme. I’m sure for their elderly, they can pay their Carers a substantial sum for the extreme hard work they do!
Increase the pay, value, status and training for this job and you will be inundated with applications from Brits.
Right now we have poor pay, limited training, pressure for rushed visits.
So agree. One of the hardest jobs to do. The Government act like ‘Scrooge’ to the Care Workers.
One thing, when your a Care Worker you don’t need a Degree!
Absolutely. Residents are charged a small fortune to stay in homes, yet the carers are on minimum wage for a job that is physically and emotionally exhausting, with no extra for unsociable hours. No wonder there’s a shortage of Brits that will do the job.
People who have been taken off benefits and shoehorned into working in the care sector, possibly on lower pay and with limited training, are unlikely to have any interest in interacting sympathetically with vulnerable people. This is a recipe for minimum care combined with a lack of empathy.
The introduction of a distinction between core and peripheral activities (and workforce/labour markets) is seated in the, then mid eighties Atkinson Model; it’s a throw back to Thatcherism , The Manpower Services Commission and the extention of Complusory Competitive Tendering under PM Blair ….
…. the ‘outsourcing’ of domiciliary care (to all groups) became the focus of the then Labour Government Gershon Efficiency drives …
… beit Supporting People, Valuing People or the many Models of Care initiatives the structural failure to absorb or ‘count-in’ the these areas of spend into a Council’s core budget (ie with the knowledge and permission of both the s114 and s151 Officers) producing the budget overspending now showing up….
…. there’s never been any ‘freedom of contract’ and there’s never been a procure procedure suited to the actual needs of the people in need of services….
… we knew this in 2004 following DofH consultation on workforce development , then again in 2008 following the SOLACE Summit findings on public procurement and then again in 2010 in conclusion to the HofC Health Committee Inquiry into Commissioning …
… an Industry shake up is needed, right ? …
…. it’s just a strange way to go about it, no? ….
Let’s not forget that the care companies and (most other major employers) love immigrants because it helps keep the salaries low! These companies have a constant supply of overseas workers who they can exploit with low pay. If that supply continues there is no requirement or need for these companies to increase pay.
We should be investing in the UK workforce in every single sector. Not recruiting anyone from abroad..
The home I used to work in was struggling to recruit, but then sponsored overseas workers. None of the jobs are advertised any more, if there is a vacancy it is filled by overseas workers. The came and were paid seniors wages, even though they werent seniors making them better paid than the other care workers doing to same job. Now it is hard for me to find a job in care, despite having many qualifications in this field. Obviously I would like a better wage, but I do the job, despite the terrible pay, because I love my job. I was a senior and had extra responsibilities as a result. When I found out they were getting a better rate of pay than me, I quit. I still work in care, but for a different company.
I am so delighted to see this policy being introduced. The skilled worker visa for care is a vehicle being abused by care agencies, exploiting vulnerable people from overseas with no skills in care and no desire to work as carers. Theses people are being charged thousands for arranging their visas and arriving in the UK to live in poverty, not because councils are under funding, but because they are forced to sign zero hours contracts, in direct opposition to the rules on skilled worker visas and underplayed by the agencies. Many find themselves with not enough hours work a week to afford food. The standard of care provided is at best adequate and at worst dangerous, with no training and currently many agencies actively recruiting from Somalia where for many, seeing another person naked violates their beliefs, making personal care work impossible. I suspect many have no idea of the extent of the problems being faced by both workers and the inadequacy of the care being provided because with agencies holding their visa, workers are extremely unwilling to go on record about their situation or unwillingness to carry out the care they are employed to provide.
And there’s people like me, who would happily look after the elderly for free.
I work as a senior care professional. I’m paid minimum wage. I work and drive an insane amount each week. I can only afford to live because I take on extra live -in positions where I’m available all night. There’s a care company that comes in during the day when I’m at work. They are immigrants from Africa. So iI would say I’m in a good position to comment on this issue as I’ve seen both sides of it.
The training given to those coming in to care positions is not even basic in some places. The immigrants are been forced to work from 7am to 10pm, paid crap wages and I’m some cases barely have enough English to communicate with the people they are caring for. They are not fit for purpose. I love my job but am considering moving out of the sector because i realise I will never be able to afford a house to live in by myself or even to use the service that I provide when I’m old. IF TOI WANT GOOD WORKERS, YOU HAVE TO PAY THEM PROPERLY. it doesn’t matter where they come from. You get what you pay for and this sector pays really badly. My mothers cleaner gets 28 pounds an hour. I get 12.50 it’s very frustrating.
Social Care: High-Skilled, Low-Paid and Deeply Undervalued
After nearly 30 years of working in the care sector, I was dismayed to hear our government refer to care workers as “low-skilled.” It’s a deeply frustrating label – one that fails to reflect the reality of the job, the dedication of the people doing it or the true value they bring to society.
Our domestic and international care workers perform incredibly rewarding, yet often emotionally and physically demanding work. These roles require empathy, resilience, communication skills, quick thinking and the ability to manage complex needs. You can’t teach that in a two-week crash course. And you certainly can’t replace that with rhetoric.
According to the latest Skills for Care data, we are currently facing 131,000 vacancies in the care sector. International recruitment has been vital in helping maintain service levels.
While I fully agree that building a strong domestic workforce is important, the reality is that many people are unwilling to enter the profession under current conditions – low pay, long hours and a lack of recognition.
What I, and many others, want is simple:
For social care to be seen and treated as a profession, just like the NHS.
For care workers to receive fair pay and proper recognition.
For there to be long-term investment in a workforce that underpins the wellbeing of so many.
Yet, when the government calls our workforce “low-skilled,” it undermines all of that. It reinforces outdated and harmful perceptions – despite years of work to shift them. It sends the message that care work doesn’t matter, when in fact, it’s the backbone of support for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
So, I have to ask: How can we talk about “professionalising” social care in one breath and then call its workers “low-skilled” in the next?
It’s not a low-skilled sector. It’s a highly-skilled, low-paid one – and that’s only because we haven’t yet made the decision to fund and value it properly.