Foreign social care staff to be welcomed to UK amid concerns omicron will wipe out workers

Good post Greta.

Some things never change.

Leaving aside the fact that this country is drastically short of people who can work as carers, we still get comments about "where are those foreigners going to live". Makes my blood boil.

ALANaV

SO it beggars the (maybe unpopular !) question as to why all the unemployed of the UK cannot be fast tracked, police checked, etc etc and employed by those that need them (care workers, HGV drivers, aides for the NHS .....all could be given on the job training as necessary ...........) OR could it possibly be they dont WANT this type of work, or any for that matter ??? I know when I was left as a single parent to make ends meet I did three jobs a day .....temp in secretarial work during the day, office cleaning at night, weekend work as a barmaid, and then typing at home in the evenings (I worked for the NHS on the 'twilight shift'.....i.e. typing letters and documents from 5.pm until 9.pm on the 'bank') ...I definitely had a struggle with child care as my daughter was then 6 but with a lot of discipline it all worked and no one has suffered because of it. I am now retired and cause Brexit, returned to the UK from living in France and Spain .....but having no transport (UK licence waiting to be renewed !) I find it impossible to do voluntary work as I live at the seaside and getting into the City early morning to work in a hospital voluntary capacity without transport would take about 2 hours ....doesn't appear to be anywhere locally I can volunteer !....working on it ....

There are certain abilities required to do care work - and HGV driving, come to that. Neither of those jobs is an easy job, and if you don't have the right temperament - especially in the 'care' sector, vulnerable people will suffer.
Some of those who are long term unemployed are, to put it politely, difficult to place because they have few skills. A member of my family was in this position. He did - willingly - one job after another but ultimately was always sacked because he just couldn't get his act together, had no social skills and couldn't get to grips with the discipline required to hold down a job.
The idea that there's a pool of unemployed people too lazy to get a job is, I believe, something of a myth. Of course there are some who are gaming the system - inevitably. But I think the long term unemployed are sometimes just unemployable.
Caring for people, sometimes intimately, really isn't for everyone and you really have to employ people with the right skills, including empathy... not just put them to work because they are unemployed.

Train the unemployed who live here

Humduh

Train the unemployed who live here

Care work is not for everyone, vulnerable people deserve carers who really want to do the job.

Many years ago quite a few American and Canadian SWs were recruited and trained in Hertfordshire. Within two years they'd almost all gone back. Wasted money.

sodapop

Humduh

Train the unemployed who live here

Care work is not for everyone, vulnerable people deserve carers who really want to do the job.

quite and they deserve better pay

I know that sodapop but not sure this country looks after its residents when they can take others already trained

Humduh

I know that sodapop but not sure this country looks after its residents when they can take others already trained

Care work is not a popular profession Humduh. As with teaching, the conditions and pay are at times so bad, native Brits won't do it. They won't accept being treated so badly.

Quite the opposite in fact. I'm a Brit and a teacher and I've worked abroad 6 out of the last 10 years. Better treatment. Better pay. I've known doctors say the same. And nurses.

I thought ( may be wrong but it’s somewhere in my memory) that one of the reasons many people voted for brexit was so that it would be made easier for people from India to come and work/train here ?

Our reputation as an open welcoming, tolerant nation has taken quite a bashing lately and is now pretty much shot to pieces. Look at the way Patel behaves.

So good luck with trying to recruit folk from other nations. They have better fish to fry than come here.

Our “taking control of our borders” nonsense is doing well isn’t it?

vegansrock

Our “taking control of our borders” nonsense is doing well isn’t it?

Quite. 'Taking control of immigration' = no one to do all the work Brits don't want to do.

This doesn't seem to have been thought through. If UK care workers are laid low by Omicron, what about workers in other countries. Are other countries so miraculously covid free that they can spare lots of staff? And wouldn't these overseas workers be just as likely (or even more likely, given our 'let it rip' policy) to catch it here and be off work?

Who'd want to come to the UK in those circumstances?

It seems extraordinarily arrogant to assume that the world will provide us with workers whenever we need them when we intend to firmly lock them out when we don't.

Just thinking where will they live? Housing crisis in my area. Also will partners be able to work in any job? If not relying on a care worker's salary won't pay rent and bills, food etc. So will government pay universal credit to top up salary? Or sponsor accommodation costs?
Wondering if this has been planned properly......

Aye, best not let any more people in even though we're desperate for workers. I mean, they'll be wanting to buy food that could go to OAPs and to have the heating on next.

Scroungers.

sazz1

Just thinking where will they live? Housing crisis in my area. Also will partners be able to work in any job? If not relying on a care worker's salary won't pay rent and bills, food etc. So will government pay universal credit to top up salary? Or sponsor accommodation costs?
Wondering if this has been planned properly......

... well I suppose some will take up the accommodation that the many thousands vacated after Brexit when they went back home...

Lots of people require live in carers or overnight waking or sleeping staff

There is also something called Shared Lives there is a link to it here

"Planned properly"???
Well of course it was. We left the EU and all the care workers, agricultural workers and NHS staff went home. Which was good because they were taking our jobs.
Now there aren't enough of any of these.(Not to mantion HGV drivers)
Now we have to organise and pay for ways to let them back in to do the jobs they were doing before Brexit.
Simples!

Perhaps all of the care workers will just choose to work in one of the other EU27 countries where the basic carer pay is a lot better, overtime is paid at a higher rate, you get paid a proper rate of sickpay, the guaranteed holiday pay is better ....

The employment of foreign nationals as care workers requires a lot more than the easing of visa restrictions - specifically, foreign care workers need to be able to speak English and without a strong accent, and they need to have an attitude towards care which is one that UK society wants for its elderly or disable population. This is not a racist or xenophobic comment, merely a reminder that the objective reality of a vulnerable elderly or disabled person is one that demands effective communication between carer and cared for, one in which the cared for can make their needs known and the carer can act on that information without imposing their own cultural traditions. When my mother first needed carers (while living with me) we had six carers coming into the house every day (two visits with two carers each time). The 'team' of carers was comprised of 14 different people and only four of these spoke English as their first language. And of these not one carer was ethnically English. The language spoken between the carers was supposed to be English but I often heard carers from the same African country speaking to each other in front of my mother in their own language and although I checked this each time and mentioned it to the agency the response was always the same - can't get the staff. This was long before Brexit, long before the pandemic. Then there's the issue of bringing a foreign care culture into play - I often found things to have been done in a slap dash way by carers from certain countries and it was a fact that some could not write English, having to copy what had been written by someone else earlier in the care book without knowing what the words said. For an 87 year old person who is at the mercy of these people it can be a very frightening experience not to be able to communicate or to be left naked and exposed on a bed while the carer takes a phone call from an extended family member because that person places family before duty to the job. I have seen all these things happen and it's an indictment of a care system that's been in decline for years. Giving visas needs to be conditional upon the correct social attitude towards giving care, and upon being able to read, write and speak English to a good standard. And the UK's unemployed who can read, write and speak English should be trained to become care workers otherwise lose their unemployment benefit. This is the voice from someone who's seen it all, thinks it's a disgrace, and worries about my own future.

the UK's unemployed who can read, write and speak English should be trained to become care workers otherwise lose their unemployment benefit

So forced to become carers. But you talk of someone needing to have the right attitude to care. I can't see that forced labour will result in that.

Caring done well is a vocation. For it to be attractive as a form of employment, the occupation needs to be respected, to offer good employment and to be paid fairly.

I wouldn't want a forced labourer to be responsible for my personal care. It's a recipe for disaster.

"specifically, foreign care workers need to be able to speak English and without a strong accent"

?

Hithere

"specifically, foreign care workers need to be able to speak English and without a strong accent"

?

That's me out then. Also, I'm not ethnically English.

Alegrias1
Count me out too
On the other hand, who would like to be the carer with so many unrealistic and sometimes impossible requirements?
Not me!