The government’s temporary immigration cap is harming the social work profession according to recent reports in the media. In July, the government imposed a limit of 24,100 skilled workers from non EU countries entering the UK and a permanent immigration cap will be in place next year.
The chairman of the Association Social Work Employment Businesses is calling on the coalition to make the rules more flexible in order to relieve the UK’s current shortage of social workers.
The chairman of the ASWEB, Ben Arnold, says that each local authority should be treat as an individual case and if a review of social worker supply and demand found there were skills shortages, employers should be allowed to recruit from overseas.
Local authorities are having difficulties recruiting experienced social workers and although government training initiatives could eventually lead to an increased supply, this does not help in the short-term.
Still on the subject of immigration, APSCo are concerned about that intra-company transfers will not fall under the immigration cap regulations.
APSCo is against the immigration cap but Ann Swain, the Association’s chief executive, said that it was nonsensical to have a cap that excludes intra-company transfers. APSCo believes that the rules governing ICTs are exploited and allow many non-EU workers to come to the UK even though their skills are not in short supply.
She also pointed out that IT workers in particular come into this country through intra-company transfers and yet there is a large pool of skilled IT professionals and contractors already in this country. The majority of workers who enter the UK on ICTs have generic skills that are already common-place in this country and those jobs could easily be filled by UK residents.
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