As part of the EU Transition Support Fund Grant received from the Welsh Government, the Welsh NHS Confederation commissioned the Wales Centre for Public Policy to analyse the likely effects on the health and social care workforce, which staff groups might be most affected, and the implications for the long-term workforce strategy for health and social care, including future retention and recruitment.
Our work – jointly authored by Professor Jonathan Portes, Dr Elsa Oommen and Dr Craig Johnson – finds that the likely impacts of the new rules on the Welsh NHS will be small. The challenge will be for the system to provide support for new migrant workers to navigate the bureaucratic challenges involved. However, there are likely to be greater vulnerabilities within the social care workforce, and this will have consequences for the integrated health and social care system if not addressed, including increased demand on primary, community and acute NHS services.
You can also listen to our podcast on post-Brexit migration and Wales here. In it, Dr Craig Johnson speaks to Professor Jonathan Portes, Dr Sarah Kyambi, and Llyr ap Gareth about the likely impacts of post-Brexit migration policies, and they offer insight into the ways in which the Welsh Government could seek to respond to the challenges and maximise the opportunities that the new migration rules will present.