Add us as a preferred source
Lisa Uttley, immigration law partner at Gherson Solicitors, writes about how immigration curbs are deepening the social care staffing crisis.
Adult social care is approaching a staffing cliff-edge. Care homes, home-care providers and supported-living services need a reliable supply of people willing to undertake demanding work around the clock. Yet vacancies and staff turnover have been stubbornly high. International recruitment became a crucial part of the answer, helping providers keep rotas covered, accept new residents and deliver care in people’s homes when domestic recruitment failed to keep pace.
That safety valve is now closing. International care worker hires have fallen from 105,000 in 2023-24 to just 30,000 in 2025-26 – a collapse of more than two-thirds. Trade union UNISON has warned that the consequences will be felt by staff, providers, families and the people who rely on care. The numbers mean fewer hands-on shifts, less flexibility and greater pressure on a workforce already operating close to its limits.
A series of immigration reforms
This fall in numbers follows a series of immigration reforms. Care workers and senior care workers can no longer bring dependants to the UK, making relocation less attractive to people seeking to move with partners or children. Employers sponsoring overseas workers face tighter obligations and more intensive oversight, with greater responsibility for compliance, records and the eligibility and conduct of sponsored staff. Higher salary thresholds and restrictions on which roles qualify for visas have narrowed the pool even further. Individually, these measures may be framed as controls on migration or exploitation, but taken together they make sponsorship harder, more expensive and less predictable for care providers.
Nor has domestic recruitment filled the gap. The hoped-for bounce in UK recruitment has not materialised because the job itself has not changed. Care work is skilled, emotionally demanding and physically intensive, yet pay often remains close to the minimum wage. Unsocial hours, insecure schedules, travel between visits, limited staffing and the strain of supporting people with complex needs make the work difficult to sustain. The retail and hospitality sectors, for example, can offer comparable pay with less responsibility and more predictable hours.
High turnover compounds the problem. Providers lose people just as they become confident, while those who remain carry heavier workloads and face burnout. Too few employers offer funded qualifications, meaningful training or a clear route from care assistant to senior carer, manager or specialist practitioner. Recruitment campaigns cannot overcome the message that care is essential, but care workers are not being treated as professionals with a future.
The first response should be sustained investment in the domestic workforce: pay that reflects skill and responsibility, protected time for induction and continuing training, nationally recognised qualifications and career pathways that allow people to build expertise without leaving frontline care. Retention is not a side benefit – it is the quickest way to reduce vacancies and preserve continuity for the people receiving care.
The government should also reconsider immigration rules that are too blunt for social care. Strong safeguards against abusive sponsors are necessary, but responsible employers should not be treated as the problem. A workable route must account for the sector’s pay structures, reduce unnecessary administration and give workers and providers certainty. Re-examining the ban on dependants, salary requirements and visa restrictions would not remove the need to recruit locally. It would just recognise that international workers remain part of a mixed workforce while domestic capacity is rebuilt.
Introduce comparable pathways
One further option deserves serious discussion. Since 2012, when the domestic worker in a private household visa route was closed, international families have been unable to permanently relocate their domestic staff to the UK. If that route were reinstated, or a comparable pathway reintroduced with proper safeguards, it might somewhat ease the burden on other carers who otherwise need to be sourced from within the UK infrastructure. Experienced domestic workers could provide an additional channel of care staff, particularly for households managing demanding routines and broaden the pool of people with practical experience. This would not substitute for regulated social care employment, fair pay or robust protections, but it could be a carefully managed additional route when every responsible source of experienced care staff matters.
Ultimately, the crisis cannot be solved by one visa amendment or a short-term recruitment drive. The government needs a long-term workforce strategy designed with providers, workers, trade unions and people who draw on care. It should set out projected demand, stable funding, national standards on pay and training and accountability for delivery. The UK’s ageing population will only increase demand for home support, residential care and specialist services. If recruitment falls and retention remains weak, the human cost will be missed visits, delayed placements, exhausted families and less time for dignified care. Immigration reform should not deepen that pressure. Without action now, the staffing crisis will become a care crisis for everyone.
