Guidance

International recruitment fund for the adult social care sector 2024 to 2025: guidance for local authorities

Published 9 May 2024

Applies to England

Introduction 

In March 2023, the government announced the international recruitment fund for the adult social care sector, which made £15 million available to regional and sub regional partnerships to develop solutions to local challenges around the use of international recruitment and strengthen safeguards against exploitation.  

The fund led to the development of 15 regional and sub regional partnerships covering all areas of England. These 15 partnerships have used the funding to develop and deliver support offers to adult social care providers in their respective areas to enable them to make use of international recruitment where this assists their workforce strategy. The funding has also been used by partnerships to provide support to international recruits to help them transition to working in the care system in England.

Over the past year, alongside an increase in international recruitment of care staff we have also seen a rise in reports of unethical employment practices. The government is committed to continuing to use international recruitment to support the adult social care workforce but wants to increase its focus on ensuring the ethical and sustainable employment of international recruits within the care system.

Consequently, the government is extending the pilot of this funding for 12 months, with a revised focus on regional and sub regional partners delivering activity which prevents and responds to exploitative employment practices involved with international recruitment of care staff in their regions to ensure that international recruitment can offer a sustainable mechanism for supporting workforce capacity.  

Aim

There is an increase in reports of unethical employment practices in the sector. In response, the funding over the 2024 to 2025 financial year will focus on regional and sub regional partnerships carrying out activities to prevent and respond to exploitative employment practices in their areas. The funding will also focus on supporting partnerships to provide continuity of care.

This includes, but is not limited to, activities which:

• facilitate in-country matching of overseas recruits who have been displaced by unethical practices or by their employer’s sponsorship licence being revoked
• strengthen ethical practices in international recruitment and the employment of staff working in adult social care
• develop shared solutions to prevent and respond to exploitative employment issues
• build on the work of the previous fund

Over the last year we have worked with regional and sub regional leads to develop a good understanding of the main issues that international recruits are facing and have used this to inform the focus and aims of the fund. This work has highlighted that this funding could be best utilised to support international recruits where their employer’s sponsorship licence is revoked leaving them without employment. Government is committed to supporting those international recruits to find alternative, sustainable employment where possible. Therefore, the funding is intended to support regional and sub regional partnerships to provide support to international recruits and to facilitate in-country matching with alternative, ethical employment.

Conditions

We are using a section 31 mechanism to pay the grant which means that applicants must identify a lead local authority able to receive the grant on behalf of their partnership of local authorities and care alliances and providers. The conditions for partnerships accessing the grant are as follows:

• partnerships should consist of local authorities and care alliances or other groupings of local providers
• partnerships should cover a region or a sub region and make sure that the services offered through the partnership are available to eligible adult social care providers and international recruits within that area
• participation in the partnership should ensure that all partners are engaged in the decision-making process, ensuring the grant money is spent in a way that adds value to the region
• the services offered through the partnership should aim to prevent and respond to any exploitative employment practices happening within the area
• there should be a communication strategy in place to ensure that services aimed at supporting international recruits affected by employer sponsorship licence revocation are well known and accessible
• partnerships should manage and monitor data for their area around suspensions and revocations, and disseminate information to local authorities affected to ensure they are able to manage the impacts on workforce capacity and service users in a timely manner
• partnerships should collaborate with other regions where provider sponsorship licence revocations and suspensions have impacts across regions to ensure responses to these are co-ordinated
• any recruitment activity supported by the partnership must adhere to the code of practice for international recruitment
• the main focus of the support services will be on assisting international recruits affected by their employer’s licence revocation to find alternative, ethical employment. However, the interventions should also support care provider compliance with UK Visas and Immigration processes
• partnerships will manage a mailbox for their region, which overseas care workers can contact for support finding new employment if their employer’s sponsorship licence is revoked. This mailbox should be active and accessible to such care workers as soon as possible
• any job matching activity must be compliant with Employment Agencies Act 1973 and the associated regulations The Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses 2003. Under section 13(7) of the Employment Agencies Act 1973, an exemption applies for local authorities
• partnerships should continue to offer pastoral support to international recruits and signpost them to any suitable local services, where appropriate
• partnerships should consider how to spread existing good practice and engage with other regional and sub regional partners on their learning, as well as develop new innovative solutions
• partnerships will monitor the impact of the interventions and provide information to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to help evaluate the impact of the fund through a light touch quarterly return. The grant funding can be used in part to support local monitoring and evaluation

Examples of how to use funding

Examples of how funding could be deployed include (but are not limited to):

• resourcing capacity to triage requests for help in finding new employment from international recruits who are affected by employer sponsor licence revocation
• using a data dashboard to manage a list of providers with sponsorship licenses in their area to enable rapid matching of international recruits to new opportunities  
• running local employment fairs where licenced providers can engage with international recruits to share more about local employment opportunities
• providing support to international recruits who are affected by unethical employment practices to access other services, for instance by maintaining a list of relevant local service to signpost to 
• developing pastoral support, such as buddying schemes for new international recruits so that they can learn from existing staff about the care sector, their rights and wider community  
• engaging international recruits in the design of the support package and employment matching service to ensure it is fit for purpose

Process

DHSC intends to distribute the grant through a lead local authority which will act on behalf of all the local authorities in the partnership and in collaboration with local care alliances, local providers or other groupings of local providers. However, the responsibility for delivery of the interventions lies collectively with the relevant parties that make up the partnership.

The lead local authority will work collaboratively to develop an application which sets out in broad terms how the partnership proposes to address the needs and priorities of providers in their area. This initial plan will set out approaches to preventing and responding to unethical international recruitment practices across the care sector in their area. There will also be a strong focus on sharing learning with other regional and sub regional partnerships and developing an evidence base on how impactful the set of interventions are. We understand that the partnership will want to develop this initial plan further in the first months of the scheme.

The lead local authority should ensure that the application reflects a consensus view across the collaborating partners. The grant application form with accompanying notes to assist completion is on the International recruitment fund for adult social care sector page.

DHSC has worked closely with existing regional and sub regional partnerships to help develop this new fund.

Key timings

The key timings are:

• launch of the fund - 9 May 2024
• deadline for applications - 28 May 2024
• funding agreed - as soon as possible after bids are received

Funding

Partnerships should base the requested amount of funding in their applications on the indicative local authority funding shares listed in Annex A. Indicative shares have been based on those used in 2023 to 2024. At the time, those shares were based on:

• registered care home beds in locations within the local authority area, using the Care Quality Commission (CQC) register with filters published on 1 November 2022
• home care users declared by registered providers based within the local authority area, using the average of weekly responses to the DHSC Capacity Tracker during October 2022

This approach and these sources have been based on the precedent of the Infection Control Fund Round 3 in 2021, as the metrics were identified as proxies for care needs and therefore workforce capacity needs. By using the same shares for 2024 to 2025, we are assuming that international recruitment activity is sufficiently well-proxied by workforce capacity needs and seeking to maintain the regional and sub regional hubs created using the 2023 to 2024 funding.

Annex A: indicative allocations

Note that the indicative amounts for each region show the maximum allocation available for the financial year 2024 to 2025.

Region	Share
North East	£948,000
Yorkshire and the Humber	£1,505,000
East Midlands	£1,393,000
West Midlands	£1,840,000
East of England	£1,799,000
South East	£2,762,000
South West	£1,718,000
Cheshire and Mersey	£826,000
Greater Manchester	£746,000
Lancashire with Westmorland and Furness	£600,000
North East London	£403,000
North Central London	£311,000
South East London	£350,000
North West London	£425,000
South West London	£374,000