Healthcare worker visa recruitment to continue: UK govt offers more incentives for healthcare migrants (Video)

By A Staff Reporter

LONDON Feb 16: The Home Office allowed care workers from foreign countries to apply for Health Care Worker visa under the Skilled Worker visa scheme from 15th February 2022. This visa was designed as a temporary solution to ‘alleviate pressures on the health and social care system as a result of Covid-19.

All those organisations who held valid Skilled Worker sponsor licence were able to sponsor workers from the Shortage Occupation List for one year until 15th Feb 2022.

There is no offical notification as of 15th Feb 2023 on whether this is being continued or not. However, on Friday Februay 10, 2023 the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) published the International Recruitment Fund. It lays out various recommendations for the benefit of the healthcare migrant workers who are to arrive in the coming years.

DHSC intends to distribute the grant through a lead local authority which will act on behalf of all the local authorities in the partnership and in collaboration with local care alliances and local providers.

In guidance published, the DHSC said councils and providers needed to form regional or sub-regional partnerships for managing the resource, with a lead local authority selected to receive the funding.

The DHSC has set a maximum funding allowance for each of the nine English regions but is requiring lead local authorities to submit applications setting out how much they need and what it would be used for, by 24 February 2023.

The lead council must ensure that the application “reflects a consensus view across the collaborating partners” and “want to develop this initial plan further in the first months of the scheme”.

The fund will be available in 2023-24 and is one of the DHSC’s responses to adult social care’s worsening staff shortages, with vacancies across the sector in England having risen by 52% in 2021-22.

This has been attributed to the impact of increased competition for staff from other low-wage sectors, such as retail, or the NHS, staff burnout as a result of Covid and a reduced supply of workers from Europe due to Brexit.

The government, NHS and sector leaders see the staff shortage as a key factor in problems including the high volume of delayed discharges from hospitals and long waiting lists for social care assessments and packages.

It said partnerships could use the fund to

help providers attract overseas candidates;
create a shared recruitment resource that looked at the whole region’s needs;
provide an advice or checking service for sponsorship licence or visa applications;
help new arrivals to access affordable housing;
assist recruits with work travel requirements, for example, helping them gain a UK driving licence;
provide pastoral support, such as buddying schemes.