{"id":324512,"date":"2025-12-19T11:13:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T11:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/324512\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T11:13:07","slug":"elderly-neglected-by-staff-shortages-in-home-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/324512\/","title":{"rendered":"Elderly ‘neglected’ by staff shortages in home care"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n It is an issue exacerbated by immigration policies from the UK Government<\/a> which are adding additional strain onto an already vulnerable system.\n<\/p>\n

\n It is estimated that more than a quarter of care workers in Scotland are migrants.\n<\/p>\n

\n Dr Jane Townson, chief executive of Homecare Association, told The Herald: \u201cNot having enough care workers is a major problem.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt risks some people being neglected in the community, having care reduced or withdrawn completely.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt leaves them trying to manage on their own and it can often end up with them arriving in hospital.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n The UK Government has made changes to the criteria for \u201cskilled workers\u201d, while the right to remain rules could drive care workers away, it is claimed.\n<\/p>\n

\n Read more:\n<\/p>\n

\n Overseas recruitment for care workers ended in July, with the role removed from the \u201cskilled work\u201d category.\n<\/p>\n

\n The Scottish Government<\/a> launched a \u00a3500,000 scheme to attract adult social care workers who have been \u2018displaced\u2019 by the UK visa changes.\n<\/p>\n

\n Displacement is caused by a crackdown from the Home Office<\/a> on rogue employers sponsoring international carers, with these licences revoked.\n<\/p>\n

\n It means international recruits on these work visas had to leave their jobs and find new employers who are willing to sponsor them short term, or they have to leave the UK.\n<\/p>\n

\n UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood also announced proposals in November that would see workers on post-Brexit health and social care visas wait 15 years before they can apply for permanent status.\n<\/p>\n

\n It was previously five years, with Scottish social care minister Tom Arthur warning the policies were “deeply concerning”.\n<\/p>\n

\n Dr Townson, who spoke to The Herald for the Social Care in Crisis investigation, said social care recruitment challenges were particularly acute in Scotland.\n<\/p>\n

\n She said: \u201cThere are workforce challenges everywhere, but in Scotland it is among the worst. It\u2019s just very difficult to recruit, particularly in rural areas and the islands.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere has been a heavy reliance on international recruitment and now the [UK] government has effectively stopped that.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIn the immediate term, things have not fallen off a cliff because there are still a lot of sponsored workers in the country but overtime that is really going to become an issue.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cMembers everywhere are experiencing challenges with the Home Office, in terms of reviewing sponsorship licences.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cPeople that have got workers here doing jobs legitimately are not getting their licences renewed in a timely way, meaning that some of the care workers are going home or leaving.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n She said international recruitment provided \u201crelief\u201d to the struggling care sector but she said the \u201cpolitical rhetoric\u201d is putting foreign workers off.\n<\/p>\n

\n The organisation, which represents care at home workers, said: “Not having enough care workers is a major problem.\n<\/p>\n

\n Read more:\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt risks some people being neglected in the community, having care reduced or withdrawn completely, them trying to manage on their own and it can often end up with them arriving in hospital.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Caroline Robinson, director of the Worker Support Centre, a charity helping isolated workers in Scotland, told The Herald that some care workers become displaced \u201covernight\u201d in many cases.\n<\/p>\n

\n She said international workers are \u201cbeing penalised\u201d because their employers lost their licence.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s an added barrier to redeploying those workers to parts of Scotland where there is a desperate need for care workers,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe\u2019re hearing there is a real desperation for workers but there are just impossible challenges.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Social care minister Tom Arthur said it was important for the Scottish Government to stand against the changes and recognise the \u201chuge contribution\u201d international workers made to the sector.\n<\/p>\n

\n A Home Office spokesman said: \u201cWe have seen unacceptable levels of exploitation and sponsor non-compliance in the sector, leaving tens of thousands of workers struggling to secure full time employment despite having the skills and experience. We are working with devolved governments to ensure those workers have access to vacancies across the UK.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n However Dr Townson also urged the Scottish Government to take more decisive action to prevent vulnerable people going into hospital because their social care package has failed them.\n<\/p>\n

\n She accused the Scottish Government of \u201ccontinuing to pour all available funds into the NHS\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\n She said: \u201cWe\u2019re not coping now so how are we going to as a society manage with some many people in our population being older and the government seems to be relying on unpaid carers, but they themselves are getting older and that means they come out of the workplace, so how is the economy going to grow if there aren\u2019t enough workers?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Homecare Association has called for a minimum price for an hour<\/a> of home care to be set at \u00a323.42 cover minimum wage for care workers and also expenses including travel, training, and basic business costs.\n<\/p>\n

\n But she said 29% of public bodies in Scotland were not paying enough to cover direct staff costs at the minimum wage in local authorities across the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is an issue exacerbated by immigration policies from the UK Government which are adding additional strain onto…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-324512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}