We all know that health and care services in Scotland and across the (dis)UK depend on the crucial efforts of workers who have come from elsewhere to make their contribution.
We’re also probably aware that many of those workers face a range of challenges, including wages which need uplift and excessive demands – however professional and efficient their managers are (which of course, is not so much of the time).
One particularly unfair and distressing cruelty is being suffered by some women from across southern Africa who have been employed to work as nurses and care assistants. These mothers, mostly from Zimbabwe (which sent the second highest number of care workers to the UK in 2023-2024), had planned to bring their children to join them after settling in the UK - but have been met with repeated visa refusals. This is despite the fact, that when the travelled here and arrived in the UK, they came with the right to bring their children with them.
The practice of the UK government going back on its word once women had moved here was begun by the previous Tory government. But – as yet – Labour’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has failed to rescind the decision taken by her predecessor to refuse appropriate visas.
Tricia Sibbons, ACTSA Director says “it’s bad enough to now deny a great many care workers the right to live with their children, as they shore up our health and care system. But to fail mothers already working here before the rules changed, by excluding their children from the UK, is simply inhumane”. As well as having helped produce this clear and hopefully persuasive report, Sibbons highlights the important fact that labour movement organisations are providing moral and practical support: “we encourage women to join their trade unions, who are already assisting many women on this issue.”
Published 1 February 2025