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

The population of the UK is still rising and according to worldpopulationreview.com/countries/united-kingdom-population will continue to rise. Brexit or no Brexit, people still want to live in Britain in preference to many other countries.

Nothing much is working at the moment so not a great time to judge Brexit unless, of course, that is your sole purpose.

Let's go the whole hog and let prisoners out on parole to work in Care Homes. I find suggestions that unemployed people be forced to work in the care sector quite appalling. As Dickens said this downgrades work that carers do and puts the most vulnerable people in our society at risk.

When my mother was in a hospice in the few weeks before she died, most of the staff, including the manager, were Romanian - without exception, they were excellent.

Casdon

Having seen the care provided first hand, some of the kindest, gentlest and most popular nurses and healthcare support workers with patients in the NHS are Filipinos and Eastern Europeans, yes their accents can be difficult to understand when they first arrive, but they are first rate at bedside care and always have a smile - which really matters.
It annoys me intensely when people deride overseas staff because of their accents - how hard is it to understand that they are as good at the job as British people, and many of them genuinely want to do it, unlike press-ganged Brits being suggested as an alternative, who have no interest at all in working in care?

I haven’t come across Eastern Europeans in the NHS (hospitals and the care sector) but the Filipino nurses and workers have been wonderful, ditto the Indian ( not British born but here from India) nurses and doctors.I have found them, along with British staff, the absolute best.

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

I really don't think working as a carer with vulnerable / elderly / sick people is something you can force on the unemployed.

Dealing with the often intimate needs of patients is really not something that everyone can do - or do with kindness and consideration for the individual.

The patients themselves can also be difficult and demanding and you need a certain mentality to deal with this kind of thing.

Your suggestion really rather downgrades the work that carers do - it isn't just another 'job'...

Forcing people to take the job of carer or lose their benefits is just asking for trouble.

It may be a 'job' on paper, but in reality, it's something quite different.

You might as well also argue - as one minister did I believe some time ago - that the unemployed (particularly women) should be forced to take jobs in the sex industry (with certain provisos) as long as the work was legitimate. You know, because it's a 'job' and the unemployed shouldn't have a choice. Perhaps we should force unemployed males to join the Army to train to fight... where draw the line with this?

The principle is all wrong.

I also believe the job market might be assisted by delivery drivers who have HGV licences helping out in that area and the unemployed who can become delivery drivers helping out there.

So let me see -
1. There is a huge demand in a certain niche in the market (carers),
2. whose nationals dont want to fill out due to the bad job conditions, pay and high expectations and
3. Once the foreign nationals emigrate to help you cover that need, instead of being grateful, the worry is how they are going to impact the world of the nationals (housing, utilities, legal rights, etc?

Wow, I wonder why nobody is lining.
How is doing a favour to whom?

Unfortunately, threads like this reaffirm the stereotype of English people being racist, xenophobic and unwelcoming.

Communication has nothing to do with languages and accents, but with tolerance and adaptation to each other

Having seen the care provided first hand, some of the kindest, gentlest and most popular nurses and healthcare support workers with patients in the NHS are Filipinos and Eastern Europeans, yes their accents can be difficult to understand when they first arrive, but they are first rate at bedside care and always have a smile - which really matters.
It annoys me intensely when people deride overseas staff because of their accents - how hard is it to understand that they are as good at the job as British people, and many of them genuinely want to do it, unlike press-ganged Brits being suggested as an alternative, who have no interest at all in working in care?

Bodach

How is this "Backpedaling (sic) on Brexit"? Surely this is part and parcel of Brexit - that we can decide what immigrants we need to meet specific skill shortages, rather than be open to all EU-comers?

Exactly!
????

Hithere
It’s another of those elephant in the room problems.
Everyone from carers, the management, the relatives of residents can see the elephant but nobody can talk about it.

Hithere

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

?

Me too. I AM English but I've been told I've got a very strong accent. Also, I'm clumsy and not good with manual labour. A stroppy teenager I CAN deal with though.

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!

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.

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

?

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.

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.

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 ....

"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!

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

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

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...

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.

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......

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.

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.