Kenyan care workers are likely to face separation from their families as the United Kingdom (UK) announced that it had banned the migration of care workers’ dependants to the country effective, Monday, March 11.
The UK government announced the policy decision has been informed by its plan to reduce the number of migrants to the country, which the Home Office stated care workers' dependants account a huge percentage of.
In a statement, the UK Home Office stated that this would be part of the biggest-ever cut in migration.
“From today, care workers entering the UK on Health and Care Worker visas can no longer bring dependants," the UK government explained.
Further, the Office clarified that in the year ended September 2023, care worker dependants accounted for 120,000 migrations.
James Cleverly, the UK's Home Secretary explained that this migration cut would also include raising the minimum income requirement for families to be granted visas in the UK.
Additionally, the Secretary also noted that in the series of migration cuts they had banned most overseas students from bringing their families to the UK.
“We are delivering on our plan for the biggest-ever cut in migration. Overseas care workers brought an estimated 120,000 dependants to the UK in the year ending Sep 23. Today we've put a stop to this, stated James Cleverly”
The ban was authorised by the UK parliament on February 19, 2024 after being announced in December 2023.
Data shared by Skills for Care, a workforce development and planning body for adult social care in England, showed that there were 1.64 million adult social care jobs(filled posts) in England in 2022/23, across 18,000 organisations.
However, despite the increase in the number of filled posts by March 2023, it was still estimated to be 45,000 below its pre-pandemic peak in 2020/21.
The move has faced both criticism and appraisal with critics citing that the move would discourage migration of care workers yet the sector was yet to achieve ideal staffing levels. By