I have spent much of my time over the last twenty years talking with people who work in Social Care, in particular in Residential Care Homes and Day Centres. Over that time a regular topic of discussion has been about the importance of workers from mainland Europe and beyond in keeping services functioning. I have had similar discussions with NHS Managers in various settings.
I have also been part of many meetings where workforce shortages across various disciplines have been identified as one of the biggest challenges to the development of effective integrated health and social care systems.
So when I read a study which finds that as many as 1.3 million people born abroad left the UK between July 2019 and September 2020 according to UK labour statistics, probably the largest population decline since WWII, I wonder what it means for services. It seems the trend was particularly pronounced in London which has lost nearly eight percent of its population in a little more than 14 months.
The study also notes that the burden of job losses arising from the impact of Covid19 fell on sectors that rely heavily on workers from abroad, such as hospitality and care services. “It seems that much of the burden of job losses during the pandemic has fallen on non-UK workers and that has manifested itself in return migration, rather than unemployment,” they said.
It is true that COVID-19 has ravaged the UK, killing more than 100,000 people, threatening millions of jobs, and plunging the country into its deepest recession for 300 years.
But it seems that for many people who left the UK last year the pandemic was not the biggest factor in their decision to relocate. They cited the UK’s prolonged agonising departure from the EU, and the heightened anti-immigration rhetoric and political crises that followed the UK’s June 2016 referendum as their main reason for leaving.
Balanced against that are the conclusions that “Big shifts in population trends in London, driven by economic changes and events, are by no means historically unprecedented,” “Inner London’s population shrank by fully 20 percent in the 1970s, so the recent picture of sustained growth driven by international migration is relatively recent.”
It seems therefore that the current population losses may be temporary, although that along with so much else remains entirely unpredictable. It is not clear to me what the impact on services has been, how many workers have been lost? In what disciplines? Is their departure permanent? Where will we get the staff we need after ten years of austerity?
We have been prevented by the pandemic from visiting services to see for ourselves and reaching conclusions about these matters. This leaves me with unanswered questions: How are services being affected? How are the experiences of patients and service users being affected? What are the short, medium and longer term plans for addressing the workforce crisis?
I am aware that I have said this many times before, but I make no apology for being fixated on these questions. The wellbeing of so many people depend on the answers
Chris Bain 