A Cumbrian domiciliary care company have begun their overseas recruitment drive.
Bellcare, a Workington headquartered care company say for the last year they have struggled to recruit frontline carers across all their service areas in Cumbria. As well as continuing efforts to recruit locally, they have now extended their search overseas having engaged a consultancy firm.
Bellcare’s managing director Carol Wilson said: “As the unmet care demand started to increase and not being able to take on new clients, which has been down to staffing, I decided in the back end of last year to look at recruiting staff from the overseas job market, to increase our staff numbers and subsequently grow our business.
It’s thought the pandemic has impacted the way people view the care sector as a career route, which has left the industry experiencing staffing issues, this has been felt right across the country.
Carol continued: “To date, we have interviewed five candidates from Zimbabwe with all of them accepting the offer of employment, we are now awaiting the Certificate of Sponsorship for these candidates, and hopefully by the end of March/early April we will have at least three full-time employees, enabling us to grow our business.
“We used a Consultancy firm SLSPEC Ltd to apply for the sponsorship licence, we have had our sponsorship licence granted on the 31st of January this year and we also use Pearls International for sourcing our candidates.”
Sponsor Licence Specialists’ Director, Kevin Barker said: “We have supported Bellcare from the beginning of their overseas recruitment drive. We initially ensured that the business would qualify for the UK Visa & Immigration (UKVI) Sponsor Licence and that the roles they were looking to fill would meet the eligibility criteria.
“Once satisfied, we made the application on their behalf and the licence was issued in just over 8 weeks. We recently requested 10 certificates of sponsorship for the position of Health Care Assistant, and they were granted within one week (this was a great achievement as care workers were only added to the Shortage Occupation List (SOL) on Tuesday 15th February 2022 – these certificates were approved on the 17th, and we believe these were the first certificates of their kind to have been issued since the change to the SOL).
“We are now liaising with Bellcare and their overseas candidates to support the visa application stage to ensure the skilled workers meet the visa eligibility criteria and obtain their Health & Care Worker visa. The newly revised immigration rules offer excellent opportunities for the recruitment of Health & Care Workers from overseas.”
Bellcare is Cumbria’s largest provider of domiciliary care and is passionate about creating opportunities and encouraging more to take up a career in domiciliary care, Carol added: “Increasing our staff numbers also allows us to continue to provide vital care services and meet the increasing demand and make a real difference in the community.”
