By: Vivek Mishra
An organisation supporting migrant workers has initiated a legal challenge against the UK government’s recent policy preventing care workers from bringing their children and partners to the country.
It said that the policy is “tearing families apart”.
Migrants at Work highlighted that care workers are now forced to decide between family life and pursuing a career in health or social care in the UK, unable to balance both as before, reported The Guardian.
The contentious policy, implemented last month, arises amidst a nearly 10 per cent vacancy rate in the adult social care workforce.
Home secretary James Cleverly defended the changes, citing the need to address non-compliance, exploitation, and abuse within the care sector.
A report by the Migration Advisory Committee projected a requirement of 236,000 full-time care staff over the next 11 years, the newspaper reported.
Meanwhile, a recent report to the Commons Public Accounts Committee revealed 152,000 vacancies in the care sector, expressing deep concerns over workforce shortages.
The legal challenge argues that the policy is discriminatory, breaching equality duties and neglecting the needs of care workers.
Aké Achi, CEO of Migrants at Work, expressed concerns over exacerbating staff shortages and causing family separation due to the new rules. “The Home Office’s changes to the health and social care visa will further exacerbate the staff shortages in the adult social care workforce,” he said to The Guardian.
“On top of this, carers who want to come to the UK are now facing an invidious choice: either they take up a job that will contribute to the delivery of social care at a time of crisis in the UK, or they continue living with their children and partners,” he said.
Jeremy Bloom, representing Migrants at Work, urged the Home Office to reconsider the rules, emphasising the lack of evidence regarding the policy’s impact on care workers and the social care system.
“We haven’t seen any evidence that the Home Office has properly considered the impact that this will have on people coming to the UK on health and social care visas, on the vulnerable individuals who need access to social care, or on the wider system of social care,” the newspaper reported him as saying.
A government spokesperson defended the policy, citing unsustainable numbers of dependents accompanying care workers. “Immigration is not the long-term answer to our social care needs. An estimated 120,000 dependants accompanied 100,000 care workers in the year ending September 2023. These numbers are unsustainable, which is why reforms are now in place restricting care workers from bringing dependants with them,” the spokesperson said.
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