13 May 2025, 09:23

By Sam Monaghan

At Methodist Homes, our overseas workers play a valuable role in caring for and supporting hundreds of older people every day in our care homes and retirement living settings.

We’ve sponsored more than 700 colleagues, all of whom have become valued members of our teams, making sure older people can live later life well. They are forging a new life in their local community and contributing economically.

While we do prioritise local recruitment, shortages in some regions have made this especially challenging, so historically we have had to rely on using expensive agency staff. To put this into context, our bill for agency workers in 2023/24, when we found we needed to start recruiting overseas workers, was around £30 million per year.

Having to draw on agency staff helps no one. For our residents, they don’t get continuity of care from individuals who get to know them........

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