Care sector alarm over prospect of police raids this autumn

Leading care home sector voices and providers are calling for the authorities to adopt a cautious approach towards the matter of illegal workers, after immigration minister James Brokenshire announced that police raids are a real possibility.

With a renewed focus on seeking out ‘rogue employers’, the minister has pledged that the ‘full force of government machinery’ will be used to clamp down on those employers that seek to gain an unfair financial advantage by employing illegal immigrants.

This means that police raids could potentially hit any care homes that come under suspicion, with the care sector named as one of three industries likely to be exacerbating the problem, alongside those of construction and cleaning.

A care home’s perspective

Chief executive of Harbour Healthcare Ltd, Andrew Worsley, whose company operates six care homes in the North West of England, hopes that if raids are judged to be necessary they are only undertaken where there is a clear reason to be suspicious.

He says: “Immigration is certainly a hot topic at the moment, with illegal immigration featuring in our media news bulletins almost on a daily basis. The thought, however, of random police raids on care homes is an alarming one and certainly not something that should be happening without very careful consideration and a high degree of justification!

“Care Homes are first and foremost a safe and comfortable home for residents – it is their home, and any intrusion by police, or other uninvited ‘guest’ could be very distressing. Local Authorities and the CQC are responsible for carrying out the appropriate checks on staff recruitment and this should be sufficient to monitor the practices in care homes.

“If, on the other hand, specific information of dubious practice becomes available through compliance visits or via whistleblowing then a police raid may be justified – but such action should only follow a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.”

Speaking up for the reputation of the sector, he concludes: “The vast majority of care providers would not contemplate compromising resident safety by recruiting unethically and should not, therefore, be subjected to the possibility of random police raids!”

Other responses

Chair of the National Care Association, Nadra Ahmed, understands the need for the use of illegal workers to be investigated, but believes that police raids are a step too far considering the sensitive nature of life in a care home.

She comments: “We’re talking about a care home for elderly people. The government should remember that these are chosen residences of individuals who are vulnerable and can no longer live alone.

“If we do have this problem then we must eradicate it – it is breaking the law, there is no excuse for it and we have to make sure that it is not happening. But there is a big difference between a justified investigation and a raid.”

Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, points out that if this is a problem in the care sector that it is likely to be a very small minority of providers involved.

He says: “The Government should stop looking at everything from the point of view of ‘what’s happening’ and start thinking about what’s causing this.”

“I don’t believe there are a lot of care providers that are using illegal staff but if they are it is because local authorities are paying for residential care to the tune of £2.80 per hour.”

New figures

Figures released by the Government this week confirm a further rise in net migration figures and the failure of the Conservative party to perform any better than Labour on the task of bringing numbers down, increasing from 94,000 to 330,000 last year.

Minister James Brokenshire has clashed with business leaders outside of the care sector too, after he accused employers of being ‘overly reliant’ on foreign workers, while groups responded by labelling the Government’s ambitions of reducing net migration to below 100,000 as being ‘bizarre and unachievable’.

Other observers have used the issue to highlight the complications of the UK’s relationship with the EU.

Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, says: “Migration levels are currently comparable to what we saw in the mid-2000s after EU enlargement. What this means for the UK is subjective. There is no objective way to decide what the ‘right’ number of migrants is, and reasonable people will disagree. What is clear is that reducing net migration to below 100,000 remains a distant prospect, at least under current economic conditions and policies.”