What are the experiences, motivations and plans of Health and Care Visa holders and their dependants?

Dr Kalpa Kharicha is Senior Research Fellow at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce in the Policy Institute at King’s College London. She led the Unit’s Visa Study, the report from which was published in October 2023. (679 words)

Internationally recruited care workers made the biggest contribution to reducing vacancies in frontline adult social care in England during 2022-3; 70,000 people came to the UK to work in a direct social care role. During this time the number of domestic recruits to care work fell. Vacancies in social care are currently at 152,000.

The increase in international care workers follows changes to government immigration policy in recent years. In particular, the addition of ‘Senior care workers’ and ‘Care workers’ to the shortage occupation list (on 27 January 2021 and 15 February 2022, respectively) allows people from other countries to apply for these jobs, with a licensed UK employer and if eligible for a Health and Care Visa.

Recent announcements on immigration policy mean that from early 2024 (exact date to be confirmed at time of writing), Health and Care Visa holders arriving in the UK after that time will no longer be able to bring their dependants with them Health and Care Visa holders who are already in the UK can bring dependants whilst on their current visa.

As part of our recent research to understand the impact of the Health and Care visa system on the adult social care workforce in England, we spoke to 29 internationally recruited care workers and dependants, as well as 22 social care providers, 8 brokerage agencies and 15 sector skills experts, who shared their views and experiences with us. Continue reading

COVID-19’s Third Anniversary: Their Story of Wellbeing and Coping from the Health and Social Care Workforce

The Health and Social Care Workforce Wellbeing and Coping Study has published its Phase 6 Report and Executive Summary. Researchers found the workforce faces continuing substantial pressure, staff shortages and is finding it difficult to cope. In this post, we summarise our findings.

Prof Jill Manthorpe, Director of the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce at King’s, is a co-investigator on this collaborative research project, involving also researchers from Queen’s University Belfast and Bath Spa University. The study is led from Ulster University (Dr Paula McFadden is Principal Investigator).(1604 words)

Report coverThe 6th Phase of this UK-wide multi-disciplinary study explored the impact of providing health and social care in the post-pandemic era from November 2022 until January 2023. The analysis builds upon the findings from five earlier Phases, beginning during May 2020 following the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. We received 14,400 survey responses from social workers, social care workers, nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals. We conducted 18 focus groups with frontline workers, managers, and Human Resource professionals.

The study provides a unique opportunity to gain in-depth understanding of how the pre- and post-pandemic times have impacted on health and social care workers’ working life, as well as effects on their own health and well-being. Our Phase 6 report presents survey findings collected over the six-months from the end of 2022 and up to early 2023. They reflect a difficult time of unprecedented industrial action in the NHS and continuing pressures on health and social care services. During this Phase, life was returning to pre-pandemic norms for most people in society, there were few remaining public restrictions, the use of face masks had generally ceased, although still being recommended in health and social care encounters and settings. Health and social care services were therefore adapting themselves to a post-pandemic time at the same time as still caring directly for people with illnesses related to Covid-19, and delays in seeking healthcare. Other impacts of the pandemic have placed increasing pressures on health and care services, such as sickness absences, staff vacancies, and retention problems, with mental health problems and new conditions such as ‘Long-Covid’, now affecting workforce stability.

Multiple workplace factors are described as a ‘vicious cycle’. For example, increased job-related pressures, exacerbated by staffing shortages and vacancies (increased use of agency or locum staff) add to job stress and this affects staff’s mental health and well-being. Some respondents indicate lasting or new depression and anxiety, or long-standing distress or trauma because of working through the pandemic. While the survey found many staff had made use of employer’s support services, not everyone sees them as accessible or helpful. Investment is still needed here; the report’s authors recommend. Continue reading

‘Opening the door’ to employment in healthcare: People with lived experience of homelessness

Cover of a reportThe NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce has published an evaluation of an access to employment programme in the NHS targeted at those with lived experience of homelessness. The pilot programme involved the homelessness charities Pathway and Groundswell and five NHS Trusts in England. Report author, Ian Kessler, here outlines the programme and the main findings of his evaluation.

Ian Kessler is Deputy Director of the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce. He is also Professor of Public Policy and Management at King’s Business School. (1,016 words)

Widening participation in the healthcare workforce has long been an important policy objective in the NHS. This has been reflected in an equalities, diversity, and inclusion agenda traditionally centring on gender and race, and more recently on young people with disabilities with the introduction of supported employment programmes by NHS Trusts, such as Project Search and Choice. However, the pursuit of widening participation is a rich policy space, connecting to an increasing range of workforce and broader service priorities.

Framed as ‘anchor institutions’, playing a key role as local employers, NHS Trusts have been encouraged to develop workforces which reflect, in socio-economic and demographic terms, the communities they serve. This role overlaps with moves to bring into the NHS workforce people with lived experience of various health conditions as a means of delivering patient-centred services and more effectively addressing health inequalities. Such moves have been especially evident in the introduction of the peer support worker role in mental health (which our Unit evaluated many years ago). More prosaically, but perhaps most pressing, the search for workforce diversity and inclusion addresses the recruitment and retention challenges faced by healthcare employers, with those at the margins of employment representing a new and reliable source of labour. Continue reading

Promoting the Health of Women Working in Home Care: towards an inclusive Women’s Health Strategy

Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green, NIHR ARC South London Post-Doctoral Fellow at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce, introduces a new report on the promotion of the health of women working in home care, which she co-authored with Unit Director Prof Jill Manthorpe.

Women make up the majority of the home care workforce. They provide essential support to people in the community with social care needs. But, the specific health needs of women working in home care have largely gone unrecognised and unmet. The health of home care workers is not just of interest at times of pandemic; it matters in addressing staff turnover, continuity of care for their clients, sickness absences but also the long-term impact on women’s later lives.

In our report, Submission of evidence on the specific health needs of women in the adult social care workforce in London with a focus on home care workers, we summarised what is known about the specific health needs of women working in home care. The report is co-produced with the assistance of the Proud to Care Board of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) London which includes home care providers, London Boroughs and other stakeholders.

We submitted it as evidence to the Department of Health and Social Care’s consultation on a new Women’s Health strategy. From what is known, we concluded the following points to consider in such a new strategy: Continue reading

Workforce planning in the NHS – it is a kludge

Richard Griffin MBE is Professor of Healthcare Management, King’s Business School. (740 words)

Many years ago, I worked for an NHS Workforce Development Confederation (WDC), that had just been merged with a Strategic Health Authority (SHA). A few months into my role as Director of Education, a colleague asked me a question that has stuck with me ever since. “Who” she said, “owns workforce in the NHS?” A very good question. (1)

Consider the current situation. Is it the Department of Health and Social Care, or Health Education England, or NHS England and Improvement?  Where do Public Health England, Skills for Health or NHS Employers or the Social Partnership Forum fit in? They all have roles. What about regional People Boards? How about Integrated Care System (ICS) People Boards? Or the workforce leads in Primary Care Networks? In Trusts is it HR, or clinical leads like Directors of Nursing or the Learning and Development? It gets even more complex when you consider individual occupations like maternity, where you have Local Maternity Systems, or Allied Health Professions, where you have Councils and Faculties.

From pre-employment to careers information, apprenticeships and beyond, all these bodies are doing good things but not always together. Also, there is no single NHS workforce plan – it is spread across numerous policy documents from the People Plans to the latest Operating Guidance.

Frankly, it is all a bit of a “kludge”. Continue reading

Nurses more likely to leave NHS hospitals where costs of living have increased quickly

The following is the press release from our colleagues at the Institute for Fiscal Studies for the report published 24 February 2021: ‘Cost of living and the impact on nursing labour outcomes in NHS acute trusts’. The report is authored by Carol PropperIsabel Stockton and George Stoye.

Improving the retention of NHS staff has been a long-term policy challenge, and will be of even greater importance in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. NHS pay is currently tightly regulated in order to reduce variation in pay for the same roles in different parts of the country and to stop hospitals competing for staff on the basis of pay. However, this regulation has consequences: a new report by researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, as part of the National Institute for Health Research Policy Research Unit on Health and Social Care Workforce, shows that national pay-setting limits the flexibility of hospital trusts to respond to local conditions, exacerbating shortages in hospital nursing labour before the start of the pandemic. These shortages exist despite increases in the overall number of nurses working in the NHS.

Using novel administrative payroll data covering the entirety of the NHS acute hospital sector between 2012 and 2018, researchers find that in parts of England where house prices – a proxy of cost of living – have increased rapidly, the relative earnings of nurses in these areas have decreased compared to nurses living and working in areas with slower growth in living costs. This has translated into increased movement of staff between hospitals, and more exits from the hospital sector entirely among frontline nurses. Continue reading

Cleaning, catering and housekeeping staff in care homes: shining a light on their contributions during Covid

Kritika Samsi and Caroline Norrie, Research Fellows at the Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce, introduce a new study at the Unit. (329 words)

Kritika Samsi

Kritika Samsi

Caroline Norrie

Caroline Norrie

Housekeeping staff in care homes – cleaners, those working in kitchens, laundries, maintenance – are often forgotten but are the backbone of many care homes. What happened to them during the coronavirus pandemic is the subject of a new research study. Researchers at the NIHR Health and Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s College London (KCL) have received NIHR Policy Research Programme funding to investigate the experiences and challenges of these care home workers during COVID-19.

Housekeeping and catering staff have been crucial during the coronavirus crisis given their role in infection control, food preparation, and help with social distancing. But they tend to be overlooked. What they have done and the challenges they faced during the crisis are often hidden. Many are women with families, work part-time, and on shifts, and often are from migrant or minority ethnic backgrounds. We know they are not well paid. Some sadly died from the virus. We want to find out whether and to what extent these workers were prepared and supported in their roles during the pandemic. This will help meet a gap in knowledge – how to better support this staff group work to prevent coronavirus, help those with it, and with service recovery. Continue reading

How to improve health and social care unregistered staff’s education and development

Richard Griffin MBE is Visiting Senior Research Fellow, King’s Business School. (434 words)

I write a fair bit about the challenges and barriers support workers can face. Research by King’s College London and others has identified persistent issues such as poor job design, lack of funding for training, pay levels that too often do not reflect the extended nature of the roles and poor progression pathways. I thought though, particularly in the run up to the Royal College of Midwives’ annual Maternity Support Worker Week (23-27 November) and the Royal College of Nursing’s first Nursing Support Worker Day (23 November), I would set out my views of some of the ways these problems can be addressed in the NHS. Continue reading

Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on ethnic inequalities in health and social care – Have your say!

Introducing a King’s College London study examining inequalities experienced by people from racial and ethnic minority groups working in health and social care during COVID-19. (570 words)

Prof Stephani Hatch

Leading the study: Stephani Hatch, Professor of Sociology and Epidemiology in the Department of Psychological Medicine, King’s College London

We have launched a study to help improve working conditions and to tackle the inequalities experienced by people from racial and ethnic minority groups working in health and social care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based at King’s College London, we are working in partnership with NHS England Workforce Race Equality Standard, NHS Confederation and the Royal College of Nursing. The study findings will be used to develop education and training materials (e.g. Virtual Reality training) available nationally to all staff, specifically to better support and improve the workplace experiences of NHS and social care staff from Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups.

COVID-19 pandemic

The pandemic has shone a light on existing inequalities that have a great impact on Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. These communities are approximately 14% of the population in England and Wales, yet they have had greater exposure to the virus and are more likely to have poorer outcomes, including severe health complications and death. We have also seen that higher numbers of racial and ethnic minority health and social care workers have died from COVID-19. Despite making up 21% of the NHS workforce, 63% of those who died from COVID-19 were from racial and ethnic minority groups. What is less often known and discussed is that health and social care staff from racial and ethnic minority groups experience greater levels of workplace harassment and discrimination compared to other staff and these experiences have been compounded by the pandemic. This can have long-lasting effects on their health, wellbeing, and their ability to do their job. Continue reading