We help health and social care providers ensure their HR function and immigration practices are both fully compliant with legal requirements and effective in helping to maintain patient care and safety standards.
As employer solutions lawyers, we help ensure our clients’ HR, immigration and global mobility programmes are both fully compliant with their legal obligations and effective in supporting the organisation’s people-led business objectives.
We have extensive experience within the health and social care sector and are fully immersed in the organisational, recruitment, human resource and immigration challenges facing care providers and HR in this industry.
We help health & social care employers:
Across the sector, vacancies soar: over 120,000 in nursing, social care, and allied health professions. This stark understaffing manifests in longer waiting times, reduced services, and even closures, directly impacting patient care and straining an already overstretched system.
The health and social care sector has long relied on international talent to fill crucial roles. This dependence stems from several factors.
The sector often experiences high turnover due to demanding workloads and wages struggling to compete with other fields. International workers, drawn by opportunities and job security, help bridge this gap.
Certain vital roles, like specialist nurses or therapists, also require expertise not readily available domestically.
Finally, the UK’s ageing population necessitates an expanding workforce, which international talent readily supports.
However, the points-based system for work visas makes sponsoring foreign workers expensive and cumbersome, especially for lower-skilled positions prevalent in the sector. And the ban on dependants accompanying care workers from March 2024 will make the UK a less attractive proposition for overseas nationals.
These immigration challenges exacerbate the health and social care sector’s workforce crisis, with undesirable consequences.
Unfilled positions and overworked staff stretch resources thin, potentially impacting the quality of care and patient safety. Patients also face longer wait times for diagnoses, treatments, and access to social care services, compromising well-being and quality of life. This all places a greater burden on existing staff, leading to burnout, reduced morale, and further staff departures.
To address these challenges and ensure a healthy future for the UK’s health and social care sector, solutions are urgently needed. This could include streamlining and reducing the cost of visa applications for specific positions within the sector, while longer term strategies to ensure a supply of domestic labour are pursued.
Ultimately, a thriving health and social care sector relies not only on adequate funding and innovative technologies but also on a diverse and accessible workforce underpinned by a sensible and responsive immigration system.
Our specialist team of employment and immigration lawyers and HR consultants work with care providers of all sizes, delivering strategic consultancy and managed services in support of their workforce planning, management and development efforts.
Through our strategic advice and managed migration services, we operate in support of inhouse HR teams or on a fully outsourced basis to ensure you operate competitively and in full compliance when employing overseas workers.
Our team of employment lawyers works with employers of all sizes to provide ongoing employment law advice, representation and strategic risk management guidance.
We offer specialist, fixed fee employment law services including access to unlimited telephone advice.
To meet the demands of an ageing population with more varied health conditions, the sector is undergoing a transformation in the provision of services, inevitably creating the need for new skills and experience to support implementation. Workforce planning and training must account for changes in the skills need both among lower-skilled care workers through to highly-skilled medical professionals.
Our team of highly experienced HR consultants can support health and social care employers to improve the performance of their HR function and enhance the overall impact of HR projects.
DavidsonMorris Ltd t/a DavidsonMorris Solicitors is a company Registered in England & Wales No. 6183275
Regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority No. 542691
Registered Office: Level 30, The Leadenhall Building, 122 Leadenhall Street, London, EC3V 4AB
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