Care Homes: How Will They Cope Without Migrant Workers?

The Bottom Line

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Business

4.6 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Care homes are to be barred from recruiting overseas staff, as part of government plans to cut net migration, but will the sector be able to tempt enough British workers to take their place?

Evan Davis asks two providers how they plan to adapt, why it's so hard to recruit and retain local staff, and what the care home sector might look like in the future.

Also, if low pay really is one of the biggest obstacles to new hires, what would a fairer, more attractive level be?

Evan is joined by:

Raina Summerson, group CEO, Agincare; Haris Khan, CEO, Curaa Group; William Laing, founder and executive chairman, LaingBuisson

Production team:

Producer: Georgiana Tudor Series Producer: Simon Tulett Editor: Matt Willis Sound: Neil Churchill and Jack Graysmark Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.0	Thanks for downloading this episode of The Bottom Line podcast.
0:08.5	It has extra content in it that we didn't have room for in the radio version.
0:13.4	If you like this episode, you, by the way, might want to check out some of the other ones we've made on the health and social care sectors,
0:19.9	like The Business of being a GP
0:21.6	from October 2022. Now, you hear lots of discussions about the problems of social care, one of the
0:29.3	chronic public policy challenges of this country with its ageing population. But this being a business
0:35.4	conversation programme, we thought this was an opportune moment to examine the care home sector as a business challenge.
0:41.7	It's not the first time we've looked at this, but it's a good moment because the government recently announced it was ending recruitment by the care sector of foreign workers,
0:51.2	all part of efforts to bring down the rate of net migration.
0:55.6	And I think it's fair to say that is going to be a challenge for care providers, so we thought
0:59.7	we should take another look.
1:01.4	So recruitment and the problems and possibilities confronting those running care homes.
1:06.8	Does that ageing population mean growth in the sector?
1:10.6	And we have three extremely experienced expert guests to help us with that.
1:14.8	First up is Raina Somerson, Chief Executive of a Care Home group called Aging Care.
1:20.1	Tell us about Aging Care, Raina.
1:21.6	Hi, thank you.
1:23.0	Yeah, Aging Care is a family-owned company, and it's been going for nearly 40 years.
1:28.8	And we do much more than care homes.
1:30.9	So we have care homes.
1:32.4	We do home care.
	...

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