As migration rules tighten and Fair Pay Agreements remain years away, Cyril Lobont examines the widening gap between political decisions and the workforce crisis unfolding on the ground in adult social care.
The pressure the government feels to bring down net migration has led to some major policy changes. Social care – despite being vital in the lives of many people – is at the sharp end of some of these.
Strict measures, including ones targeting visa routes into social care, have been put in place to stem the flow of people coming to work in the UK, abruptly reversing policies which aimed to actively draw in the foreign nationals that social care desperately needed after the pandemic. From around the start of 2024, changes to visa rules led to dwindling numbers of people joining the sector from abroad. More recent restrictions, implemented by the current government, have seen numbers drop even further, and have essentially removed any direct routes from abroad into care roles.
The debate on migration is very divisive, but it’s undeniable that adult social care is going to need many more staff in the coming years. It’s also clear that many vacancies, or the prospect of a career in the sector, aren’t attractive enough to British nationals in the current climate. Pay, progression, and working conditions are key reasons for this. The number of British nationals working in adult social care is 85,000 lower than it was in 2021, with most new joiners having come from non-EU countries.
In recognition of recruitment and retention challenges, the government has plans in motion to make social care work more desirable to domestic workers through a process of Fair Pay Agreements. In theory, this should be an opportunity for employers and workers in adult social care to agree, at a national level, on pay and other important employment matters that could make social care a better place to work.
While a positive step forward, big challenges remain. Firstly, the first Fair Pay Agreement is planned to go live in April 2028. This leaves well over two years in which, with the international recruitment tap turned off, providers could end up with growing numbers of vital roles sitting unfilled. Employers could decide to boost their pay offer before a national agreement comes into force, but the steep increase in the cost of providing care in recent years will make this feel unaffordable for many.
Making the Fair Pay Agreement a success will rely on lots of moving parts. The employers and unions who negotiate the agreements will need to work well together, as well as with the government. A big challenge will be designing an agreement that works for everyone that makes up this very diverse sector. Moreover, the right funding from central government is vital. The £500 million committed for the first agreement only equates to around 20p per worker if shared equally. This just is not going to sustainably and radically improve pay and terms in social care in a way that massively boosts the inflow of British nationals. Bigger sums of money might be made available for later agreements, but there is no guarantee of this.
Changes to immigration rules seem to have assumed that the Fair Pay Agreement, which is still a long way off becoming a reality, will solve the recruitment and retention dilemma. Another possibility is that social care was, at best, an afterthought when new immigration policies were being designed. Either way, the government continuing to pull in different directions at the same time is going to do huge damage. With little prospect of meaningful reform before 2028, policymakers across different departments must try to ensure policies align and support the continued survival of adult social care, not push it into deeper crisis.
