The social care sector must be prioritised in the Budget, as it faces a ‘perfect storm’ of the threat from Coronavirus and new immigration policy, set to kick in from 1 January 2021.
Potentially hundreds of thousands of job vacancies could remain unfilled as a result of changes to immigration rules, according to the GMB union, which represents care workers. The sector’s reliance on non-British nationals has increased by 43% in the past decade. 115,000 are from EU countries and 237,000 were born outside the EU. The Office for National Statistics figures show an estimated 110,000 current vacancies in the sector. The average vacancy rate for all sectors is 2.8%. For social care, it is 8%.
Most businesses will be barred from recruiting overseas workers for jobs that pay less than £25,600 a year. The average salary for care workers employed by private providers was £16,200 last year, according to data from Skills for Care.
Care workers are not currently slated to receive visa dispensation, unlike NHS staff and agricultural workers. The Home Secretary Priti Patel has said that vacancies could be filled by recruiting “economically inactive” people in the UK to do “low-skilled” jobs.
DR UK CEO Kamran Mallick said: “Care work is critical, skilled work. At the moment, disabled people, and an ageing population, are increasingly having to rely on overstretched family and friends to plug the gaps left by necessary skilled care professionals who appear to be leaving Britain in droves ahead of the 1 January 2021.
“With the threat of Coronavirus on the horizon, which will potentially see an increase in care needs for those with underlying health conditions at the same time as an increase in key workers self-isolating to minimise the spread of infection, we are approaching a perfect storm for the sector.
“Government must ensure that the sector remains populated by those capable, able and willing to do this vital work. Care work enables people to live with dignity and independence. We call on Government to rethink visa policy in relation to the social care sector, and we call again on the Chancellor to be mindful of the most vulnerable in society in relation to Coronavirus measures in today’s Budget.”