Overseas workers are holding together England’s care sector, new data shows.
Skills for Care, the workforce planning body for the sector, said an estimated 70,000 people took up care jobs in the country after arriving in the UK in the year to March 2023.
The figures, up from 20,000 the previous year, followed the loosening of visa criteria for the roles.
Their arrival helped lower the vacancy rate in the adult social care sector to 9.9 percent, from a peak of 10.6 percent the previous year—though it remains higher than before the pandemic, and much higher than the average of 3.4 percent for the UK economy as a whole.
Published on Thursday, it noted that this was a “substantial increase in international recruitment” and came as employers relied more on international recruitment since care workers were placed on the Shortage Occupation List in February 2022.
It also said while care worker pay has increased at a faster rate since the introduction of the national living wage, there is very little difference in pay depending on experience.
On average, care workers with five or more years of experience in the sector were paid just six pence more per hour than care workers with less than one year of experience, the report said.
Leaky Bucket
The report also revealed how almost 400,000 people left their jobs in social care in the year to March, with around a third of these exiting the sector altogether, according to a detailed annual report on the workforce which reveals a “leaky bucket” on staffing.Skills for Care said its projections suggest that in just over a decade from now, a quarter more posts in the sector will be needed.
The body said that equates to some 440,000 posts needed to keep in line with the projected number of people aged 65 and over in the population by 2035.
Skills for Care said it is working with “a wide range of organisations and people who have a stake in social care” to develop a workforce strategy for the sector, identifying what is needed over the next 15 years, complementing the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan which was published earlier this year.
The organisation said the plan will aim to ensure the sector has enough of the right people with the right skills and will help employers and commissioners with their workforce planning.
Adult social care is estimated to bring £55.7 billion per year to the economy in England, up by 8.5 percent from 2021/2022, and greater than the economic contribution of the accommodation and food service industries, Skills for Care said.
The report said, “Far from adult social care being a drain on resources, we are key to the economies of local communities and in economically deprived areas.”
A report from Skills for Care in July had already noted that the workforce grew by 1 percent between April 2022 and March 2023, after shrinking for the first time on record the previous year, and that the vacancy rate fell to 9.9 percent—around 152,000 vacancies on any given day—from 10.6 percent the previous year.
Six-Fold Increase
Earlier this month, The Epoch Times revealed how there has been an almost six-fold increase in the number of skill-related work visas for non-EU immigrants.In 2022/2023 alone, 159,000 skill-related work visas were granted to foreign nationals outside Europe—an increase from 27,000 permits issued in 2018/2019, according to analysis of government data.
Between 2021 and 2023, nearly 60 percent of those were granted to workers considered to be in low-skilled jobs, including chefs, fishmongers, and poultry workers.
The statistics were described as a “betrayal” of the Tory party’s 2019 manifesto pledge of bringing net migration down by focusing on bringing highly-skilled workers to the UK.
Alp Mehmet, chairman of campaign group Migration Watch, said that in fact, the “reverse is now true.”
“Allowing immigration to continue at anything like present levels will change the nature of the country within a generation,” he said.
“We need serious action now, there is no time to lose.”
Filling Gaps
Release of the Skills for Care report comes in the same week as the government launched a recruitment campaign for the third year in a bid to help build the “vital workforce.”Skills for Care chief executive Oonagh Smyth welcomed the “green shoots for the sector” with the workforce having grown slightly and the vacancy rate down.
“But the challenges haven’t gone away,” she added.
“In particular, the fact that 390,000 people left their jobs in 2022/2023 and around a third of them left the sector altogether shows that we have a leaky bucket that we urgently need to repair.
“We can’t simply recruit our way out of our retention challenges. So, we need a comprehensive workforce strategy to ensure we can both attract and keep enough people with the right skills to support everyone who draws on care and support—and all of us who will draw on care and support in the future.”
Miriam Deakin, director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, which represents trusts, welcomed the pledge to develop a new workforce strategy but said it must be accompanied “by sustainable Government investment and support to ensure the sector can not only recruit but keep much-needed staff.”
Both Care England, a representative body for independent adult social care providers, and the Health Foundation charity said while international recruitment is filling staff gaps, a new approach is needed.
A government spokesperson insisted the “action we’ve taken is growing the social care workforce and filling vacancies, meaning there is more capacity in the social care system than last year” and said it is investing almost £2 billion over two years to help councils support the workforce.
