Social Care Reform.. You'd just better hope for a quick death!
It's yet another sign of how far Labour has come from its international socialist roots: Labour is going to scrap the care visa as a route into the UK for foreign care workers...
However while this might seem on the surface to be of benefit to British workers, who presumably will 'step up' (along with some AIs) and plug the gaps, scrapping the Care-Worker Visa could be a costly mistake
Even with the current care visa in place, the social care sector is already suffering a recruitment crises: there are over 130,000 jobs to fill and there is no clear plan to replace the gap left by leaving migrant workers.
This seems to be a case of Labour bowing to populism by stopping this particular type of migrant, yet without any real idea of how to mitigate the consequences....
A Sector Based on Foreign Labour
England's social care sector relies heavily on foreign labour, the legions of the British unemployed simply aren't interested in filing these jobs. The scale of dependence is huge: nearly 58,000 overseas care workers were brought in during 2023 alone under the visa scheme which is soon to be scrapped.
The covid years give us some idea of the level of dependency, when there was extremely limited migration: vacancy rates during 2020/21 were over 10%, without a stream of new recruits through the care Visa scheme.
Who Will Fill the Gap?
The government are lazily resting on the assumption that domestic workers are going to fill these gaps.... however, care work is low paid given how physically and emotionally draining it can be, and it is also extremely low status.
The whole industry needs a overhaul to make it work better.... maybe higher tiers of carers, with more prospects for promotions for more experience... I mean there's all sorts of processional therapeutic services people in care need, there is the possibility of having specialist training pathways linked to career roles, that would be a start. With obviously higher pay the further up you go, people need more than just minimum wage and no prospects for 30 years.
Gambling with the quality of life of the vulnerable....
Without a plan in place to fill the gap that's going to be created to this knee-jerk reaction to Reform there is going to be increasing strain on the social care sector and the people who are ultimately going to pay the price are your parents, if they need to go into care.
Final thoughts...
What's especially crap about this policy announcement is that there is a social care review, but it's been batted back several years, and so any potential solution to problems are going to be after the event, that's TERRIBLE governance.
In the meantime it's back to the preferred individual coping strategy of just ignoring social care and hoping like hell we or anyone we know don't end up in need of any.
So fingers crossed for a quick death while you're out doing something relatively active in your mid 80s!
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There is needed better pay and career paths in the social care sector if they want people to stick around.
So disappointed in this government. I thought they had a plan!
What with Yanis telling us we're just a sideshow as well, it's enough to make you want to emigrate!
CNAs (Certified Nursing Assistants) in the USA also have low pay and are largely considered interchangeable. Those who the capacity will learn other specialties such as Respiratory Therapy or Phlebotomy. Nursing education has become extremely challenging to where we also have shortages. Most of our foreign nurses come from the Phillipines, as far as I have seen. But they generally work on a contract basis, moving about the country wherever they can find work.
So a health care crisis is looming in the uk as well. In Belgium the sector doesn't look better in terms of burn-outs among nurses, job vacancies, etc.
The latest trend is that more and more nurses are becoming independents filling in jobs for years but being more tax efficient. Can't blame them.
The health care system over here needs a reform but it's a quite complex issue...
We need to look at the people who just won’t work too. On the other hand care work is very tough. My grandmother ended up in this system for her final days. The staff were a mixture of local women and foreign staff…
I think 130,000 job vacancies aren’t just a number as they represent a real crisis.
https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1l8k9ig/social_care_reform_youd_just_better_hope_for_a/
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Things are riling up in this sector and I know few people who are employed as care worker who are going through tough time due to low pay scale compared to the efforts they are providing. This would have been a golden opportunity for bot the care workers and the elderly people of Britain if only the government would have taken a proper step to make it work for everyone.