A contradiction sits at the heart of the problems currently facing the UK care sector. On the one hand, there remains an acute shortage of workers to bathe, feed, dress, converse with and comfort the UK’s aging population. There was a 6.8% vacancy rate in England’s care sector in March 2025, according to data from Skills for Care. For domiciliary care roles it was 9.4%. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of migrant care workers in the UK who, due to a recent government crackdown, are now unemployed and desperately seeking new jobs.
The UK government rolled out a new, £16m employment scheme last year to address both problems. This created 15 regional rematching hubs to connect migrant carers in need of sponsorship with legitimate, vetted employers. The concept was straightforward enough. But so far it has largely failed.
We at the Work Rights Centre provide free employment and immigration legal advice to migrant care workers. We speak to people in need of assistance every day. But in all those conversations, we have only met a handful who have found jobs through the scheme. The Home Office’s strict visa requirements and out of touch expectations are the reason why.
Into the unknown
In recent years, UK Visas and Immigration, a part of the Home Office, increased enforcement action on rogue care agencies as reports of exploitation became more prevalent. Between July 2022 and December 2024, 470 care agencies lost their licences to sponsor migrant workers after being found to be breaking the rules.
While this seemed on the surface to be a win for workers’ rights, the crackdown did not come with protections for the migrant workers employed by these agencies. At least 39,000 people have lost their sponsorship as a result. All of these workers are in the UK on the Health and Care Worker visa, which ties their immigration status to their continued employment by the agencies that hired them. Now that those agencies are no longer allowed to sponsor them, these displaced workers will have their visas curtailed unless they find new sponsors.
Just 3.4% of those invited to use the rematching scheme have found a new job through it
Many of these care workers had sold everything they had in the belief that they would embark on a new life as a care worker in the UK. They left behind children or aging relatives. Many also took out loans from family and friends to pay recruiters as much as £10,000-£35,000 for a Certificate of Sponsorship – unaware that this should be free.
Now this leap into the dark has become a leap off a cliff, through no fault of their own. Thousands of people have arrived to the UK only to find that no job was waiting for them. Others have been overworked, underpaid or abused, silenced by the threat of visa cancellation. Then the government’s rematching scheme was created. Many view it as their last hope.
A failed scheme
Our Freedom of Information requests to the Home Office reveal that just 941 of the 27,611 people invited to use the service reported finding a new job through it. That’s a success rate of just 3.4%.
We also conducted interviews with workers, administrators from seven of the 15 hubs, and care sector providers. Together they painted a picture of hubs that were doomed to fail from the outset.
This was not the hubs’ fault. The administrators we spoke to have made real efforts to support people into new employment. But the government’s expectations are ultimately at odds with the reality of the care sector and the real experiences of workers.
First, we found that the strict requirements of the Health and Care Worker visa, which most care workers to date have come on, are incompatible with the needs of care sector employers. This visa category requires a worker to have a contract guaranteeing full hours and a fixed salary. Yet as the sector has shifted away from residential care and towards domiciliary care in recent years, such contracts are becoming harder to get. Domiciliary care workers are increasingly expected to work flexible hours, accept zero-hours contracts, and drive their own car.
Our analysis of vacancies in the adult care sector found that more than half of direct care roles are now in domiciliary care. Data from Skills for Care finds that more than one third (34%) of workers in domiciliary care contexts are on zero-hours contracts. The Health and Care Worker visa isn’t up to date with how the care sector works, and that has made the rematching hubs all but non-functional. While the government has now closed the visa scheme to new care worker applicants overseas, this makes no difference to those already in the UK.
It’s an own goal that will ultimately result in aging British citizens going uncared for, and unemployed carers falling into poverty
Added to that, employers must have a licence to sponsor migrant workers. This can cost a small business up to £1,867, a figure which is set to rise to £2,540 when the government implements its intention to raise the Immigration Skills Charge. For many care agencies already tightening their belts due to long-term funding pressures and recent tax increases, the funds simply aren’t there.
Sponsorship incurs high costs for workers, too. Already in debt, many jobseekers told us that additional visa fees to switch sponsors posed a challenge. Add the need to buy a car to that, and their situation feels hopeless.
A slim chance at a new job cannot be the only thing that this government has to offer people who followed all the rules and are offering a service this country desperately needs. And indeed, a £16m rematching scheme was not the only option available to ministers. A far cheaper, far more effective option would have been to grant them the basic freedom to take their labour to an employer that needs and values them.
But instead of granting care workers the flexibility to solve their problems, the government has instead insisted on keeping their hands tied behind their backs – presumably in the name of being ‘tough on migration’. It’s an own goal that will ultimately result in aging British citizens going uncared for, and unemployed carers falling into poverty.
And now the bar is even higher
The government announced that it is closing the Health and Care worker visa to new overseas recruitment shortly after we completed our research. The existence of the rematching scheme was used as partial justification for this decision; Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said struggling care agencies can fill their vacancies by recruiting from the pool of migrant care workers already in the UK. Job done.
And yet, even if the rematching scheme boasted a 100% success rate rather than its current 3.4%, it would still fill less than a third of the estimated social care vacancies in England. Skills for Care data placed the number of social care vacancies in England at 131,000 in England in 2023/24. The government's claim is blatantly false – a smoke and mirrors talking point rolled out to hide the government’s real ambition of bringing down net migration at all costs.
It’s not too late for ministers to relax the Health and Care Worker visa rules to allow carers to take up roles with any care sector employer, without the need for sponsorship. We know both employers and workers are crying out for this. But will ministers listen?
This is a summary of No match: Why funding rematching hubs for displaced migrant care workers is not enough to tackle exploitation by Andrei Savitski, Adis Sehic and Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol, published by Work Rights Centre, 2025.
