Immigrants in UK Social Care: A Black History Month Tribute

EI

From the desk ofElvis IdegbekwuManaging Director, Peach Care Services · Black History Month 2026

I arrived in the UK in November 2008, and, like thousands of immigrants in UK social care, I have given my working life to caring for others. In February 2009, I took my first job in social care. Since then I have worked in almost every kind of care setting, and I have built a career I am proud of. Today I lead my own service, Peach Care Services, and our teams deliver more than 5,000 hours of care every month across Milton Keynes, Northamptonshire and West Sussex.

My story is not unusual, and that is exactly the point. Up and down the country, Black Africans and Caribbeans, alongside colleagues from India, the Philippines, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria and many other nations, are holding up British social care. We are carers, team leaders, nurses, care coordinators, registered managers and, increasingly, owners of the services themselves.

This Black History Month, I want to tell that story honestly. It is a story of contribution, but also of real challenges: for the employers who recruit, for the workers who arrive, and most of all for the people who receive our care. Each of them deserves to be thanked.

A long history of keeping Britain cared for

None of this is new. When HMT Empire Windrush docked in Essex on 22 June 1948, the National Health Service was two weeks away from opening its doors on 5 July 1948. Many of the men and women who came from the Caribbean in those years went straight into hospitals, wards and care settings. As the Migration Museum puts it, those first employees “formed a fundamental part of the health service”, often while facing racism and discrimination.

The generation now arriving from Lagos, Harare, Accra and beyond is walking a road that was paved by Windrush nurses. Some of the older people we care for today were cared for by those nurses when they were young. That is history coming full circle, and it is worth pausing on.

Before the visa route: on our knees begging for hands

Anyone who ran a care service before 2022 will remember what it felt like. We were always short. Care coordinators and registered managers spent more time out on calls than in the office, covering visits because there was simply nobody else. Managers who should have been leading quality, training and supervision were instead driving from one double-up call to the next, late into the night.

We were not alone. In February 2022, the Homecare Association reported that “workforce shortages in homecare are acute” and that “demand is exceeding supply and many providers are unable to take on new work”. Behind those words were real people: an older man waiting for a package of care to start, a daughter giving up work to look after her mum, a hospital bed that could not be freed.

A decision that changed the sector

In February 2022, the government added care workers to the Shortage Occupation List, which opened the Health and Care Worker visa to them. I will say it plainly: it was a brilliant decision, and it came at the moment the sector needed it most. The results speak for themselves.

Sources: Skills for Care workforce reports (2024 and 2026); Home Office visa data reported by PA Media (May 2025). Full links are at the end of this article.

Look closely at that second figure. In the year to March 2024, India was the largest single source of care worker visas (21%), followed by Nigeria (19%), Zimbabwe (15%) and Ghana (12%). Nearly half of the new carers who came to Britain that year came from three African countries. When we talk about Black History Month in social care, we are not only talking about the past. We are talking about the people on shift tonight.

International recruits have also tended to stay. In 2023/24, Skills for Care found that turnover in the care worker role was 30% for internationally recruited staff, compared with 41.1% for people recruited in the UK. For the people we support, that means more familiar faces and fewer strangers at the door.

What immigrants bring to care

The numbers matter, but they are not the whole story. In my experience, many of the colleagues who come from abroad bring something that cannot be measured in a spreadsheet:

• A deep respect for older people. In many of our cultures, you do not call an elder by their first name until you are invited to. You stand when they enter. You serve them first. That instinct carries straight into care.
• Experience and qualifications. Many arrive with nursing, health or professional backgrounds from home, and they bring that knowledge to every visit.
• Resilience. People who have crossed continents, learned a new system and started again from nothing do not give up easily on a difficult shift.
• Faith, family and community. These values shape how we treat the people in our care, as if they were our own parents and grandparents.

The honest part: challenges for employers

Recruiting from overseas is not an easy shortcut, and good employers know it. Holding a sponsor licence brings serious legal duties: right-to-work checks, record keeping, reporting changes to the Home Office and making sure every sponsored worker is paid and treated exactly as promised. Then there are the practical realities that rarely make the headlines: finding safe, affordable housing, helping new colleagues learn to drive on British roads for rural home care rounds, and paying for induction and training before a single visit can be covered.

The rules have also changed several times, and employers have had to adapt quickly:

• From 11 March 2024, care workers arriving on the Health and Care Worker visa could no longer bring their dependants.
• From 22 July 2025, the route closed to new care worker applications from overseas. Care workers already in the UK can still switch sponsors until 22 July 2028.

We should also be honest about why the government tightened the rules. Not every employer acted in good faith. Between July 2022 and December 2024, the Home Office revoked more than 470 sponsor licences in the care sector, and more than 39,000 workers had been linked to those sponsors. Some workers were charged illegal fees, promised hours that never came, or left without work. Those stories hurt the people involved, and they damaged trust in the whole sector. The many employers who did things properly now carry the responsibility of proving that international recruitment can be ethical, fair and good for everyone.

The honest part: challenges for the workers

Imagine landing in a new country in winter. The accent sounds nothing like the English you learned at school. The food is unfamiliar, the days are dark by half past four, and your family is thousands of miles away. Within weeks, you are expected to deliver intimate personal care to a stranger, in their own home, with confidence and kindness.

That is what we ask of international carers. Research supports what many of us lived. A study of migrant care workers in English dementia care homes by Ow Yong and Manthorpe (2016) described the early months as a time of insecurity and “an overwhelming state of cognitive burden within an unfamiliar cultural context”. Even two years in, workers felt that “psychological and socio-cultural adjustments were still thought to be needed.”

Then there is racism and unequal progression, which we cannot leave out of a Black History Month article. According to Skills for Care’s 2026 Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard report, around 22% of adult social care staff are from minoritised ethnic backgrounds. Yet staff from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic backgrounds are 37% less likely to work in senior management roles, and shortlisted applicants from these backgrounds were appointed 16% of the time, compared with 28.8% for white applicants. Representation alone, as the report says, “does not deliver equity”.

Most importantly: the people who receive our care

Here is the part of the story that is told least often. The biggest adjustment of all has been made by the people who draw on care, and by their families.

Many of the older people we support grew up in a very different Britain. Within a few short years, the person who helps them out of bed, washes them, dresses them and sits with them over a cup of tea has, in many cases, changed from a local woman who shared their accent and memories to someone from Lagos, Harare or Kerala. That is a monumental change in one of the most personal parts of life.

It has not always been easy. Accents can be hard to follow, especially for someone with hearing loss or dementia. A carer may not know how “a proper cup of tea” should be made, who Vera Lynn was, or why the football results matter so much on a Saturday afternoon. Names can feel unfamiliar, and so can faiths and customs. For some, it has taken time to trust a new face. And, honestly, there have been occasions when that adjustment has shown itself as prejudice, which must always be handled with dignity and firmness, protecting both the person receiving care and the carer.

But what I have seen far more often is grace. I have seen people patiently show a new carer exactly how they like their boiled egg and their tea. I have seen people ask their carer to teach them a greeting in her own language, just so they could say good morning to her properly. I have seen families in tears when a much-loved carer moved on, because she had become part of the family. Relationships like these are the heart of good care, and they are built from both sides.

What makes it work

The need is not going away. Skills for Care estimates that adult social care will need around 410,000 more posts by 2040. We will need people born here and people who choose to make Britain their home, working side by side.

Thank you

To the government, for opening the door in 2022 when the sector was on its knees. That decision kept services running and kept people safe at home.

To employers who recruited ethically, housed people properly, trained them well and treated them as family.

To every immigrant care worker, past and present, from the Windrush nurses to the colleague who arrived last year: you left everything familiar to care for strangers, and you have done it with remarkable courage.

To our British-born colleagues, who welcomed new team members, explained the slang and showed them the way.

And above all, to the people who receive our care, and the families who love them. You accepted change with patience and kindness, and you made us feel at home.

This Black History Month, the theme is Honouring Our Communities. In social care, our community is all of us: the cared for and the carers, wherever we were born. I am proud to be part of it.

because we love to care 🍑