King's College London

Background

In response to significant workforce pressures the Government added care workers to the Health & Care Worker Visa and Shortage Occupation List (now known as Immigration Salary List) in February 2022. This led to a sustained increase in care workers being recruited via the Health and Care visa route.

However, increased levels of exploitative and unethical practices in the sector have since been observed. This led to increasing enforcement activity and disruptive licence revocations - which has downstream impacts on local authorities’ capabilities to commission and deliver care packages and left many ‘displaced’ workers seeking new employment and sponsorship.

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) provided £16m via the International Recruitment Fund (IRF) 2024/25[1] to support displaced workers to continue working in the sector and to help tackle the exploitation / unethical employment of international care workers. This funding was allocated to existing regional partnerships made up of a collaboration of local authorities, local care alliances, local providers and other local actors with an interest in care, who administered funding in 2023/24.

This evaluation forms the third phase of work on international recruitment in adult social care since the changes to the Health and Care Visa in February 2022 carried out by the research team at the NIHR PRU HSCWRU, and builds on the findings from the previous phases, namely the Visa Study[2] and IRF Evaluation 2023-24[3].

Methods

The evaluation involves interviews with regional partnership, care providers and displaced international workers. They key research questions are:

• What has been the experience and approach of partnerships in implementing the objectives for the 2024/25 fund?
• What has been the experience of care providers engaged by the partnerships, especially those who have offered to sponsor affected workers for new visa applications?
• What has been the experience of international care workers affected by the revocation of their employer’s sponsor license or exploitation more broadly?
  

Timeframe

April 2025 – November 2025

Funding

The research is being funded by National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Policy Research Programme (Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce: Ref. PR-PRU-1217-21002).

Outputs

The findings from this evaluation will inform policy developments on adult social care workforce and immigration systems. Key outputs include reports to the DHSC and academic and practice publications and presentations.

Project team

Kalpa Kharicha (PI), Carl Purcell

See also

The Visa Study: Understanding the impact of the Health and Care Worker visa on the frontline adult social care workforce (Project report, October 2023)

Evaluation of the International Recruitment Fund for adult social care for 2023-24

Notes

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/international-recruitment-fund-for-the-adult-social-care-sector-2024-to-2025/international-recruitment-fund-for-the-adult-social-care-sector-2024-to-2025-guidance-for-local-authorities

[2] https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/232434177/Kharicha_et_al_2023_Visa_Study_report.pdf

[3] https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/international-recruitment-fund-for-adult-social-care