UK Government Ends Overseas Care Recruitment – How Our Job Boards Will Help Recruiters Adapt

As overseas recruitment ends, we’re stepping up — launching new tools and services to inspire more people into care and help UK employers hire with confidence.

The UK’s social care and healthcare recruitment sector is facing a recruitment crisis. The UK Government’s announcement by the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, on 11 May 2025 that overseas recruitment for the UK care sector will end has sent shockwaves through the industry.

Putting politics aside, we believe our role as a job board is to support recruitment in the sector.

This issue extends beyond just social care.

A month ago, Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, announced in Parliament that there has been a “dangerous over-reliance” on clinicians from overseas coming into the NHS and other healthcare employers.

It is clear that we will all have to work harder to inspire and attract people to become support workers, children and young people professionals, nurses, doctors, allied health professionals and all other roles that keep our hospitals, care homes and other health and care organisations operating safely.

Care and Healthcare Need to Inspire & Attract More UK Candidates

In social care, immigration has helped to staff around 20% of the workforce. And yet, there remains a vacancy rate of 150,000.

In terms of new recruits:

> over half of all care worker jobs filled in 2022/23 were by people from overseas, largely due to changes in visa eligibility and the social care visa route introduced in 2022

> 50% of new NMC registrants in 2022/23 were internationally educated

“We’re putting politics aside and focusing on what matters: supporting care and healthcare employers to find the talent they need. With overseas recruitment no longer an option, we’re investing in the tools and content that will inspire more people in the UK to consider careers in these vital sectors.” - Matt Farrah, Niche Jobs Founder

The challenge is clear

➡️ How will the UK inspire its own population to enter the care sector?

➡️ How can we make it easy for them to apply to jobs?

➡️ How can we market opportunities effectively?

We are going to play our part to answer these questions.

We are taking a series of steps to help recruiters in social care and healthcare inspire, attract, and hire UK-based candidates.

These initiatives will also be rolled out on our Irish site, Healthcarejobs.ie.

Here’s what we’re going to do:

✅ AI-driven job marketing
✅ UK-only applicant filters (excl. Healthcarejobs.ie)
✅ Frictionless ATS integration
✅ Employer storytelling support
✅ Affordable pricing tailored to care sector needs

1) Inspire People To Work In Care & Healthcare

For 10 years we have given a platform to those working in care and healthcare to share their stories. You can read these in our Nurses.co.uk advice area.

We are going to ramp this up, and across all four of our social care and healthcare job boards in the UK and Ireland.

In the coming weeks, we'll invite many more from our community to share their career journeys and personal stories — showcasing what drives them and why they love working in care and healthcare.

Our mission is simple - through storytelling, we will reach a wider audience, inspire new or passive candidates to consider a career in care and healthcare, and eventually apply for jobs.

2) Technology to Support UK-Only Applications

Since our advertisers and recruiters will no longer be able to accept overseas candidates, we will use technology to prevent them from applying. This technology is powered by our platform partner, Jobiqo and will be in place by September.

(Note: we will leave our Irish site more open to overseas candidates.)

3) We Will Increase Marketing for All Jobs Posted on Our Job Boards

We are going to use AI-driven programmatic marketing to distribute our customers’ jobs across targeted channels and platforms.

This will help us reach new audiences and present your jobs to them - increasing exposure and applications.

4) We Invite You to Share Your Employer Vision to Help Build Interest

If you would like to publish information about what you do, so that you can broadcast your employee message, just send it to us and let us promote it to our audience.

We will publish it as a blog, and then promote it by email to our mailing list. Great, evergreen content.

5) We Will Make It Easier For Candidates To Apply

Reducing friction is key to maximising candidate applications.

We will be working with Jobiqo, who power our platform, to create an integration with your ATS.

This will remove abandonment - applicants will fill in your application form on our job boards, and be delivered directly into your ATS.

6) Screening Questions

It’s really important that skilled care and healthcare professionals meet the specific criteria required by your eligibility and qualifying standards.

The simplest way is to give you control over the screening questions. We will launch this by the Autumn of 2025 - again, assisted by our partners at Jobiqo.

For instance, you might need 6 months experience working in the role in the UK; or a driving licence for home healthcare teams; or DBS checks for Children and Young People professionals.

7) Affordable Pricing

We understand that many of our clients operate under financial constraints — including the NHS, local authorities, charities, care homes, home healthcare providers, and hospices.

We offer a price that works for the sector, and that still allows us to provide the services to help employers inspire, attract and hire using the latest and most advanced job board technology and recruitment marketing available.

We're committed to helping employers adapt to this new landscape and to ensuring the UK care and healthcare sectors thrive through homegrown talent.

For more information, please contact matt@nurses.co.uk.