Foreign workers could be recruited to staff care homes in England amid worries about staff shortages this winter.
Reports suggest the health secretary, Steve Barclay, wants to send NHS managers to countries like India and the Philippines to hire thousands of nurses.
According to The TimesBarclay is seeking to make it easier for regulators to check international qualifications to fast-track new hires into the NHS.
‘Urgent action’
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Our new international recruitment taskforce is considering innovative ways to boost staffing numbers within health and adult social care.
“As part of this, we will work with the sector and recruitment experts to examine how to recruit staff from overseas more effectively into adult social care.”
It comes after figures revealed that the NHS is becoming increasingly reliant on overseas recruits, with the number of healthcare staff recruited from abroad almost doubling between 2014 and 2021.
At the time, Danny Mortimer – the chief executive of NHS Employers – called for “urgent action” from ministers to tackle “chronic” staff shortages.
‘Chronic shortages’
He said: “International recruits have always been an important component of the NHS workforce. We recognise and highly value the contribution our overseas staff make to our teams and the care we provide to our patients.
“International recruitment should be seen as one part of a multistrand approach to workforce planning and the government’s code of practice for international recruitment helps employers ensure they are adhering to ethical recruitment practices.
“While there is also a focus on growing and retaining the domestic workforce, we can’t escape the fact that there are 105,000 vacancies in the NHS and 165,000 vacancies in social care. We are in need of urgent action and the new prime minister must commit to publishing a fully costed and funded workforce plan to tackle chronic staff shortages in the longer term.”
Dr Kitty Mohan, the chair of the international committee at the British Medical Society, added: “The simple fact is that we do not have enough doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff to meet the growing and increasingly complex healthcare needs of our population.
“We are calling for the government and NHS England to publish a long-term workforce strategy as soon as possible,” she added.
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