Sustainable Care & COVID-19: Migrant Workers and the Delivery of Long Term Care in Austria, Australia and the UK
This episode is hosted by Professor Shereen Hussein from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and features special guests Professor Sara Charlesworth from RMIT University, Dr Ricardo Rodrigues from the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research and Dr Agnes Turnpenny from Oxford Brookes University.
Shereen and Agnes worked together on the Sustainable Care programme, studying Migrant care workers in the UK: an analysis of care at home, a work package led by Shereen. In this episode they discuss their findings and how the significant contribution made by migrants to the care sector in the UK has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Ricardo Rodrigues gives background and context on the impact of COVID-19 in Austria, where there has been a reliance on migrant care workers since the late 1990s. Read more research from Ricardo on his profile page here.
Professor Sara Charlesworth gives insight from Australia where geography plays it's part and temporary visas for low skilled workers have created a void in the care workforce since Australia closed its borders due to the pandemic.
Learn more about Sustainable Care on our website: http://circle.group.shef.ac.uk/
---Intro/outro music: Ambient Cool by Sunsearcher is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 Gain/fade effects applied
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
The Sustainable Care
team is exploring how care arrangementscurrently in crisis in parts of the UK
can be made sustainable and deliverwellbeing outcomes
in this sustainable careand COVID 19 podcast series.
Our researchers and special guests discusshow the pandemic has impacted
(00:35):
the different parts of the care sectorwe are studying.
Welcome everyone
to one of our Sustainable Careand COVID podcasts.
(00:58):
Today,I am very pleased to welcome you to talk
about a very important topicand timely topic
of home care migrant workers
in the context of Brexitin the UK and COVID across the globe.
I am delighted to have with me
great guests who have done excellent workin this area.
(01:21):
First, Professor Sara Charlesworth,who is a Professor of gender work
and Regulation at their RMIT Universityin Australia.
Her recent research is focussed
on aged care workersin cross-national perspectives,
also focusing on migrant workersand decent work.
Welcome, Sara.
(01:42):
I'm very pleased to be here.
Thank you very much, Sara.
And we also have Dr.
Ricardo Rodrigues,who is the head of health
and care unitat the European Centre in Vienna.
He has carried out comparative researchon a number of areas pertaining to long
term care, including working conditionsof migrant and native care workers.
(02:03):
Welcome. Thank you for coming, Ricardo.
Thank you very much for having me.
And we have from our very own team, Dr.
Agnes Time Penny, who is a researcher,and she's currently
at the Institute of Public Care at OxfordBrookes University.
Welcome, Agnes. Hi, everyone.
And I am Professor Shireen Hussain,professor of health and social care
(02:26):
policy at the London School of Hygieneand Tropical Medicine.
And I led the stream of worklooking at migrants care
workers in homecare in the UK in the context of Brexit.
So welcome to this timely story.
And we all know that countries acrossthe globe
have escalating demand for long term care.
(02:48):
With particular needs for home care,where people prefer
to receive care,where they continue living.
But we know alsothat most countries have faced,
you know, facing huge challengesin recruiting enough workers.
And we know that migrant skilled workersform a significant contribution
to this work.
(03:09):
However, the issue does notdoes not happen with its own challenges.
So I'm just going to take this opportunityto ask our great guest
to give us a little bit of contextabout their own countries
and about the contributionof migrant workers
and the type of contributions,perhaps the challenges,
but also the advantages that they bring.
(03:31):
So I might startwith the neighbouring Austria
and ask Ricardo to give us a little bitof a background and context.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. So.
Austria has relied very heavilyon migrant carers
as part of its model for longterm care provision,
(03:53):
dating back really to the late nineties
when Castro care benefits were implementedand men and families
developed this solutionin which they directly hired
migrant carers from neighbouring countries
to act as live in carers
with their relativesthat were in need of care.
(04:15):
This has in the meantimebeen legalised at the
at the end of the past decade
and still we have nowcurrently an estimated
60,000 migrant carers
that workas these so-called 24 hour carers.
So they usually work aroundsort of fortnight ships shifts,
(04:36):
staying in people's own homes and usually
working as self-employed
or with contractswith sort of brokering agencies.
In parallel we have also a
large number of migrant carers working inthe sort of more informal care sector.
(04:56):
We don't have very good data on on onthese migrant care workers,
but we've run a recent surveyand we found that around
25% of all workers working inboth residential care and home care
in Austria were migrantmaking care workers.
And we also then carried out some researchin terms of differences
(05:19):
in working conditions between these
these workers and native workers.
So overall, migrant carers form
a very important, I would say,
part of the Austrian sort of approachto long term care.
And this is also very much drivenby the wage differentials
(05:40):
that exist between Austriaand the neighbouring countries, but also
it's very much driven
by the geographical location of Austria,which is very much in the heart of Europe
and therefore can more easilysort of attract.
And these these rotating migrant carers
to to address its care needs.
(06:01):
Thank you.
Very encouraged. It's a clearlythere is a form of reliance.
It's a question of the workforceis coming from
migrant workersthe contribution of migrants
and is that really importantto the sustainability of the whole system?
And it was really interesting as well
that you saidabout the circular nature of migrants and
(06:22):
and the importance of the livein care work
which is somethingmaybe not exactly the same here in the UK,
but it's really interesting to seehow is that facilitated by Cash for Care
and the kind of bigger policiesof ageing in place and marketisation.
So I wonder how the situation isin Australia.
Eric.
(06:43):
Thank you for sharing.
Well, it's a very different context.
Australia, unlike offshore, is an islandand that in itself
that kind ofwe call this the tyranny of distance
and that's has created, I suppose,
opportunities and also currently barriersto market workers.
We start to a countrythat's relied on permanent
(07:03):
migrationand particularly post-war migration.
And it used to be the case that certainlyin homecare a large proportion
of healthcare workers particularly camefrom England, Ireland, New Zealand.
That has changed dramatically over time.
We now see many more homecare workers from Southern Asia
and at the same timeour migration settings have changed.
(07:26):
So we've moved from a countryof permanent migration
to much more of a European model,perhaps of the storico
model of guest worker temporary migration.
So increasingly, the migrantswho are working as residential
care and in-homecare are arriving on temporary visas.
And because the work is whateverqualifications they hold with,
(07:50):
the work that they're doingis classified as low skilled,
they are preventing themfrom attaining permanency.
So they're in a difficult situation.
Perhaps a distinguishing featurein Australia
is we've relied on some particulartemporary visa programs.
International students, for example,make up a large proportion
of migrant workers in residential agedcare and working holidaymakers
(08:15):
whereby people might arrivefrom a variety of different countries.
They're allowed to spend a year heretravelling,
but if they work then theythey're allowed to stay an extra year.
So we rely a lot on temporary labour.
So despite the very large proportionof migrants, so we're sitting at over
50% of migrants in residential agedcare, 37% in home care.
(08:41):
Australians don't tend to think about
or haven't thought about migrants.
But when the borders slammedshut with COVID
and we have a huge issuesbecause international students
weren't coming anymore,then increasingly the providers
or the employersare turning to the government
to adjust migration policysettings to increase migration.
(09:06):
Thank you.
Thank you, Sarah and Ricardo.
It's really clear how the geographyand history plays a big part here.
And it's interestingwhen we think about the UK position
because it's somehow the pathwayto the inclusion of migrants
and allowing and opening the doorto migrants have taking different forms
(09:27):
relation to the broaderimmigration policies
that from relyingin the colonial histories
and having the work permitsand relying on nurses coming
perhaps from the Philippinesand from India to the open access
and the EU marketsand maybe a little bit of the model
that Austria,you know, Ricardo was talking about.
(09:49):
But now we are heading to Brexit wherethings are quite going to be different
and they're looking interestingly to,
you know, ideas like the temporary visa.
And there are lots of lessonsto be learnt here.
Agnes, you've been involvedin this project for several years,
which is the Sustainable Care Projectand part of that work, you know,
(10:11):
we've been collecting data and informationand views about that.
Do you want to tell us
a little bit about the projectand then maybe reflect
in what Sarah and Ricardohave said to tell us
where the UK is sitting within this,within these dynamics.
So we started our sustainable project
in the UK and then a teamthat was able to use Brexit.
(10:35):
So it was clearthat the UK was leaving the EU,
but at that timethere was a lot of uncertainty,
especially around what would happenwith free movement of labour.
So our research project
took place in this really kind of fluidlychanging and very uncertain context.
(10:56):
Sometimes it was difficult
to balance, but at the same timeit also had benefits because we could
look at the sector at the time of changeand kind of opinions and positions.
Very 43 states have growth methodsto conduct their research.
One was a reviewof the existing literature
(11:17):
and data within the review
of the outcomes and the challenges
of migrant labour in homecare in the UK,which was published.
We understand that some of the dataand skills for CARE publishes
data on the nationality of the workforce.
(11:37):
So maybe the question of trendsand changes in that data.
The other part,as I referred to both of the survey
that the surveys, the survey of people,
they are stakeholdersin the different parts of the sector.
So we invited experts, we identify very,very soon social care
(12:00):
experts or immigration policy experts
and also migrant rights organisations.
So we asked them about what they thinkthe future
of migrant workersin social care could look like
in the first wave of
this survey took part in 3019.
(12:24):
So before COVIDand before we had a very clear idea
of what might happenwith the immigration system based Brexit.
The second wave of the Delfisurvey took place in 2021.
There was kind of like an emerging pictureof what the immigration system
might look likeand also very importantly with
(12:47):
the COVID pandemic was was really in
this wave of the pandemic,in the lockdowns, in some of the industry.
And then the third very important
part was speaking to different peoplewho are affected
differentlyby immigration and social care.
So we spoke to provider organisations,STO managers,
(13:11):
owners of homecareand living care services.
How these kind of impending changesmight have them, their operation
and what their expectations were
and what sort of immigration systemwould work for them.
We also spoke to some families,the legal of social care
and the particular who who go on
(13:34):
social care, offering supportprovided by migrant workers,
voice their fearsand thoughts of and birth.
And with this both migrantsnever faced them stay.
So then this was another very
important that was part of our big series.
(13:55):
Thanks. Thanks, Agnes.
So it seems that the three countriesthat we're talking about
look at migrant workers as a core elementin the provision of care.
So we know in the UKwe rely actually on data that is collected
not from the whole sector,collected from parts of the formal sector,
and it indicates that overthe last 20 years at least,
(14:17):
there has been a contributionof at least 20% of the workforce.
And what was interesting,
the UK has been through huge changesin immigration policy.
So as I mentioned, there was the workpermit schemes before 2003.
Then there was the expansion of the EU.
Then now we are facing Brexit.
And what does it tell us thatthere is a core element and gap
(14:39):
in our supply of workforcethat has always been
filled by migrant workers, regardlesswhere they are coming from
or the pathwayand journey to come to the UK.
So, so we kind of startingfrom a similar point
and obviously in the UK, unlike Australia,I've got a lot of information
on love and care.
We don't have much information about that.
(15:01):
It's all anecdotes,but we can see that this is a growing area
and a growing area for the recruitmentof migrant workers as well.
So clearlythere has been a lot of interest
and a lot of utility of migrantsin the long term care sector.
What was rather shocking throughthe whole systems is the pandemic
that has come and closed and shut bordersand suddenly give this wake up call
(15:26):
to actually you can't continue relyingor if you want to continue to rely
and you have to thinkabout the means to do that.
So so maybe we can start firstwith the impacts of Corbett.
So what happened?
What changes that countries have takento respond to, to cope with the realities
of Corbett, bearing in mindthe implications of migrant workers?
(15:50):
So I'm just goingto invite Ricardo to start.
Thank you.
Sherry.
So when COVID 19 hit, Austria was
also very early on implementedquite stringent lockdown measures.
And this, of course, includedalso the closure of
of borders very early on in the pandemic.
(16:13):
At the same time, because of the relevanceof this migrant care model,
there were concentrated efforts
to try to establish channels throughwhich migrant carers
could still continueto come to Austria or remain in Austria,
and thus sort of fulfilthe care needs of other people.
(16:35):
So fundamental.
This took a number of timein a number of initiatives.
On the one hand, some of the migrantcare workers that were already in Austria
when the borders were closed,they were allowed to extend their rotas.
So usually they stay,as I said, one fortnight with each family.
They were allowed to extend thisand they received financial compensation
(16:57):
up to €500 for this extension
of their unforeseenextension of their rota in in Austria.
At the same time, a number of
trains and charter flights
were organised to the sending countries,so mostly Romania
(17:17):
and Slovak Republic, for example,
with the intentionto bring in the migrant carers
that were sort of stranded,so to speak, in their countries of origin.
And these migrant carersthen were placed on quarantine on arrival
so that they could then continue to work
(17:38):
in the houses of the families for the
for the uses they were working with.
At the same time, as I said,a lot of these migrant care workers,
the ones that liveor that provide care in people's own homes
and they're self-employed
and they were able to benefitfrom a federal scheme
that was implemented in Austriain which people who were self-employed
(18:01):
and had seen a reduction in their incomeduring the pandemic could apply for up
to €2,500 per month of federal support.
So this was kind ofin a way on the positive side
of the reaction to the pandemicor to at least to the closure.
Fundamentallyof the end of the of the borders.
(18:23):
But at the same time,these measures also clearly, I think,
shown the limits a bit also
of this migrant care model in Austria,in the sense that, for example,
very few of the migrant carers
could actually benefit from this support
for self-employed peoplebecause their income
(18:47):
was just not sufficient for themto qualify, for example, to pay taxes,
which meant that they were then unable,they didn't have a tax number,
so they were unable to benefitfrom this, from this, from this support.
At the same time, and because they areself-employed, the majority
of the migrant carers, for example, do notare not covered by the sickness benefit.
(19:10):
So they would have to it's onlyafter the 43rd
day of sicknessthat they would receive any sort of
health benefit unless they payadditional social insurance, which many
of them don't.
And this
obviously was quite an issuein the context of a
of a pandemic
(19:31):
to finalise.
Also, for example, the quarantine period
in which migrant came as placewhen arriving in Austria through these
formalised channelsof chartered trains and charter flights.
This was also unpaid.
So at the surface Athere was a coordinated response
by the authorities in Austria to keepthe migrant care worker model running.
(19:55):
But at the same time, this response,I would say
built very much on the inequalities,still very much on the quite
a lot of the issuesthat were coming already from behind
in terms of this migrant careworker model.
Thank you, Ricardo.This is really interesting.
And you brought in the new ones
and also great to the surfacethat we talking about a sector
(20:18):
that does not followthe normal kind of work and employment
conditions that when policy Putin assumes
and hence maybe the policy responsedoesn't have the positive effect
because it's basicallynot addressing the structure and the
inequalities within the structurethat you have describe,
because maybe a lot of people don't know
(20:39):
the level of fragmentation of workand types of contract
and the pay that doesn't give you certainallowances, etc..
So I wonderwhat's happening with Australia.
We know that that that that may bethe response to COVID was quite strict,
that Australia was one of the firstto close border and to
(20:59):
to do all these lockdowns.
This or I would be really keen to getyour feedback and reflections on this.
So let me thank Shereenwill we shut our borders,
closed them shut in February last year.
They're still not formally opened, apartfrom some exceptions.
And certainly people who are workingin the care sector,
(21:20):
bugs in residential aged careand home care who are on temporary visas
were very badly done by the government.
The federal government providedquite a bit of income support
to workers who lost hours of work, workerswho lost jobs and
with the shuttering of residential agedcare,
the diminishing in terms of servicesprovided to home care clients.
(21:45):
A lot of workers lost hours of work,a lot of workers lost their jobs.
And so a decision was madesimply to provide no support whatsoever
to people on temporary visasso that that was one tangible effect.
The complaints that certainly unionsbrought to the fore
and unions haven't been particularlygood around migrant workers.
(22:06):
They don't focus on them
despite the fact that they area very large proportion of the workforce.
But the big issue for all home care
workers was access to PPE.
And just recently in the last few monthssince jumping ahead,
that COVID vaccination has been mandatedin residential aged care.
(22:27):
It's been left to the states.
And being a federal system,the federal government
is in charge of aged care,but the states are in charge of health.
So in Victoria,where I live, the Victorian Government
has now just mandated home care workers
need to be fully vaccinatedin order to continue to provide services.
(22:47):
And the Federal Governmentis now requiring providers
to provide details of the vaccinationstatus of their workers.
However,we don't know any other characteristics
of those workers,so it would be impossible to tell.
For example,if there has been a special reach out
to migrant aged care workers
(23:08):
that has in terms of migrant communities.
But our main problem in Australiais because
we appear to containCOVID in its first wave.
We took a
long time to get to vaccinationand when we realised
vaccination was important,it was a huge issue of supply.
So while residential aged care
(23:30):
residents were designatedas a priority group and so were workers,
in fact, when the rollout occurred,workers were left out of that.
And in home careit's been even slower back
to research like myself, it'sincredibly difficult to get any data about
the characteristics of workers who've losthours, workers who have been vaccinated.
(23:54):
In terms of what's happening now,
we are moving to open our borders,even though we're in the middle of a delta
wave and the programthat was put in place to bring in Pacific
Islanders to work in agedcare in response to employer complaints
that there weren't enoughworkers has just been reactivated.
So 50 workers from the Kiribati islands
(24:18):
have just been flownto regional Queensland.
It's very unclearwhat conditions await those workers
when they arrivein these regional communities and I think
that is of a concernand just following some of the debates
in the UK, the same debatesthat have been happening here,
if we need more workers, the argument goes
(24:39):
we should provide better wagesand conditions.
You know, following the debates in the UK,the Prime Minister's been putting
forward a similar argument to not reallyadjusting migration settings.
The particular pressure in Australiais that we've recently
had a royal commissioninto aged aged care, quality and safety
and it's now recommended mandated carerschoose the resident,
(25:03):
which means that we would needto quadruple our current workforce.
But in my view, and this is particularlythe case, in-home care
model of work organisation
which provides employerswith numerical flexibility,
it keeps workers onshort hours of work, is less
underemployment,particularly for home care workers.
(25:26):
And employers seemed reluctantto offer more hours of work.
And we know from survey data
that migrants in particular,not surprisingly, want to work
longer hours than do locally born workers
because they need to set up
homes,they need to support their families, etc.
And yet that's a real issue,particularly in home care.
(25:47):
You can have incredibly fragmented timeschedules.
You can work foras little as an hour at a time
without any guaranteeof any further hours.
So thethe ongoing issues that face the sector,
but they're particularly acutefor migrant workers.
And I suppose what covered one of the
(26:09):
lessons of COVIDwas that you were second class citizen
if you weren't locally born,went on a permanent visa.
Thank you, Sara.
And it's really clear
that, you know, the difficultiesthat faced by migrants
within these kind of fragmented systemsand unprotected systems,
(26:29):
I guess in the UK, response to COVID
is specific to longterm care have been has been very little.
In fact, it has been criticised
not to take into considerationthe effects on the sector.
So there has been some delayseven in guidance to care homes,
(26:50):
home care has remained in the blind spots.
There hasn't been really guidanceabout how to meet shortages.
But what was interestingthat happened in the UK that we were
we were discussing Brexit in relationto closing borders
and obviously there have been some effortsto maintain
(27:10):
the stock of EU, particularly EU migrants
that already in the countrythrough the EU settlement scheme,
many of whom were workingin the care sector.
But one of the main policy
and strategies that we've done as areaction to COVID was the furlough scheme
that the government introduced,which is paying 80% of the salary
(27:33):
or income of workerswho have to stop working due to lockdown.
So we had really big lockdownsand certain sectors
has been impacted dramatically,particularly the retail sector.
The hospitality.
And what's happenedis that there was this interesting
opposite directionflows with Brexit and prior to the call
(27:54):
that there was a lot of peopleleaving the country
because they weren't certainabout what's going to happen.
Kelvin happenedand then a lot of the local workers
were available in in the marketsbecause of the lockdown and closure.
So the social caresector had a period of great recruitment
at the beginning of the COVID, and thatkind of delayed the thinking for a bit.
(28:17):
So we did research in this areaat the time
and people will saywe're recruiting for a post
and we've got like 80 fantastic CVSand we can pick the best.
But that was very short lived.
It was very temporary.
But what it did, it's kind of delayed itthinking about, okay,
what's going to happen when peoplego back to the UK didn't put in place
(28:40):
strong financial compensationfor any of the social care sector,
unlike, for example, hazard paythat we've seen in Canada.
There has been some extra money coming,particularly from Scotland,
Wales, Northern Ireland,but not much in in the English side,
the single site restrictionsand ensuring infection control.
(29:01):
Again, that was not mandatory.
Like other countries,it was just recommendations.
So and in that narrative,migrant workers were completely absent,
that there was not a discussionthat is specific to migrants care workers.
So the UK is actually nowfacing a perfect storm because,
you know, people going back to workwho were kind of
(29:24):
in the in the local marketand there has been now suddenly,
you know, organisation care organisationsseeing a.
Huge.
Level of recruitment challenges,huge shortages.
And it's unclearhow how that could be resolved.
And the discussion, Sarah, you know,you put it eloquently about better jobs,
(29:46):
which is fantastic, but we can't seehow the better job is going to happen
and how we're going to happenfast enough to attract the workers
and the reality of population ageingwhere you don't have that surplus anyway.
So there is a limit to this attraction.
Even if you have a very good job,you can attract a certain number.
But we're runningat a very low unemployment rates anyway,
(30:08):
so it's around, it's less than 5%.
So you have a little bit of room, butnot a huge and we are thinking about that.
You need 20 to 25% of the workforce,which is estimated
at 1.6 million jobs in the UK.
Then we're talking about huge numbers.
So I think thisthis hasn't been really thought through.
And I guess within all these discussionsat the higher policy level,
(30:32):
nobody or very, very few people talkabout the implications on the individual.
So people who were able to come from, say,South Africa to do a bit of work here
in the UK for three or four weeksand then go back or three months
and go back, that was not possibleand that had a lot of implications
on the wellbeing of migrants.
(30:53):
So maybe we take them,you know, we take our discussion
towardsthinking about the humans doing the work.
So these people that we rely on,they are either
presented in the policywithout a clear understanding
of their conditions or completely absentfrom the policy picture.
And we talk about the evidencethat we have as researchers
(31:17):
around their particular working conditions
and will be situating thiswithin a really difficult sector.
So it's not like it's rosyfor everybody else, but realising
that migrant workershave an extra layer of implications
that have, you know, affect themadversely.
So Ricardo, you have been reallyyour centre have been really active
(31:40):
in doing surveysand talking to migrant workers
and it would be really insightfulfor us to see you give us some findings
from your recent work,particularly in that period of COVID.
Yeah, thank you very much.
I mean, that's
I think that's a very good pointthat that that you raise,
because as I was talking about,some of the measures
that were implemented,such as this extension of the rotas,
(32:02):
for example, in in Austriafollowing the closure of the borders,
of course, what this sort of
what this didn't considerwas the fact that
a lot of these migrant care workershave families away from Austria,
have also found the responsibilitiesaway from Austria, not only
(32:23):
in terms of the parents
of these care workersthat they probably will be looking after
during this fortnight periodswhere they are in their home countries,
but also children.
And because this is very typicallythe sandwich
generation that has really
caring responsibilitiesand this is of course
these are mostly also womenand this is something that I think
(32:46):
has been very much overlookedin the discussion
of this of this of this
model that relies a lot on migrant carers.
And besides that,
we've we've carried out the surveyon the working conditions of
migrant carersin England in the formal sector,
(33:08):
so in residential care homes, in the homecare sector and we compare this
with native native workers.
And what we found is curiouslyat the first layer of comparison,
we didn't find much in terms
of differences in working conditionsbetween migrants and natives.
So that was a sort of positivelysurprised result.
(33:29):
We got,
of course, a lot of this was
drivenby the fact that, as Sarah mentioned
before, a lot of the migrant care workers,they really want to work longer hours.
They want to sort of save
and earn as much money as possibleso that they can send this back home.
They also tend to be younger.
And as this sort of young migrant effect
(33:50):
that we see very much also
in our in our survey sample.
And the other aspectthat then we were able to uncover
when we looked a little bit more carefulinto these differences
in working conditions,is that although we didn't find
significant differences between
EU migrants and native workers,we found quite significant differences
(34:13):
between non-EU migrants and both
native and EU migrant workers.
And we did this also togetherwith some colleagues in Sweden
with a similar survey.
And curiously, even though the countries
of origin outsidethe EU were very dissimilar between
Austria and and Sweden,we had similar findings there as well.
(34:37):
So this I think is an aspectalso that we should bear very much in mind
sort of thishow how the migrant care worker
model intersects with these different sortof migration regimes as well.
And I was I was thinking very much of thisas listening to the both the Australian
and the UK sort of context.
(35:00):
And this is something that is perhapsgoing to become even more relevant
also in the context of Austria,because we've seen already that
there has been a change in the profileof the migrant care workers we have.
So up until a couple of years ago,the majority of the migrant
carers were really comingfrom Slovakia, from Hungary.
So there's a really neighbouring countrieswhere it's relatively easy to commute.
(35:25):
So to give you an idea between Bratislavaand Vienna, there's only about 45 minutes
a distance with the carand now about three years ago
it was the first time that carers fromRomania became
the single most
relevant groupamong these migrant care workers.
We've also witnessed
(35:47):
with little data that we
have an increase in care workers
that are coming from further placesin Eastern Europe,
many of them not covered by thethat are not members of the EU.
And this, of course raises evenmore issues, not only in terms of what is
what is the effect of these longer
(36:08):
spells outside of home,but also in terms of social protection.
There are a number of
mechanismsthat guarantee social that the guarantee
also the transfer of pensionrights, for example, within the EU.
And these are not always the same
when we talk about countriesthat are outside of the of the EU.
(36:29):
One final aspect I would like to highlightin terms of the wellbeing
of migrant carers and I think particularlyin the context of the pandemic, is
and so a lot of these migrant carers,as I said, they provide care in people's
own homes, which means that they were alsoas socially isolated
as the older peoplethat they were caring for themselves.
(36:52):
And this was againsomething that there was a lot of emphasis
placed in Austrian, rightly so,on, on the increase in loneliness
and social isolation of older people.
But I don't think there was a
similar concern,a similar sort of spotlight
placed on the migrant carersthat were sharing
the houses with these same older people
(37:15):
and that were not only at a heightenedrisk of infection as well,
but were displaced from their families,from their social networks.
So for for whomthe question of psychological well-being
arising from isolation, I think was
is very, very, very much relevant.
Thanks, Ricardo.
You know, all what it said resonateswith a lot of things in the UK.
(37:38):
But it was really interesting as well
when you said about the differentialsin relation to being EU or non EU migrants
and the similaritiesthat you found with Sweden,
although the country of the countryof origin are different
and just thinking about the future,how we see this moving forward
in terms of moving post-COVID, hopefullythings will return to normal one day.
(38:02):
It's not going to be normal.
It's going to be the new normal.
But that may be calledit have made us all pose
and thinkbecause just kind of nothing impacts.
And hopefully maybethat would would shape the future policy.
So as research,a strong research is in this field.
What would be your adviceto the kind of future
(38:24):
looking policies in relation to aged careand the role of migrants within that?
I'll I'll start by Sarah,
because I know you're very involvedin this policy and and I know
that you have been working in this areafor, well, for many decades
around the bigger pictureof employment conditions and better jobs
where we go from here, ideallyWhat's your advice for policymakers?
(38:49):
Well, it's interesting, Shireen.
I mean, if there can be a silverlining of COVID, it really shone a light,
particularly on residential aged care,unfortunately, much less on hunting.
But how vital it was,
how terrifying it was
to have certainly in Victoriain our second wave,
we had a very high deathwere relatively high compared to the UK,
(39:12):
but relatively high death ratesin residential aged care.
That's where most of our deaths were.
So there has been a graspby the community at large, but certainly
perhaps reluctantly by the
Federal Government that something hasto happen around wages and conditions.
So for example, I'm involvedas an expert witness in two different work
(39:35):
value cases under our industrialrelations system, which are seeking
to increase the wages of frontline
residential aged care workersand home care workers by $5 an hour.
Now, whether or not this is going to besuccessful is a moot point.
But the royal commissionis probably the first of 20 inquiries
(39:57):
we've had into the aged care sectorover the last 20 years.
To actually say this has to be addressed.
Yes, we may well need migration,but until we can prove
providing decent wages and conditionsa career structure,
we are not going to be ableto provide the care because that's also
(40:17):
the other thing that came out of the royalCommission was the poor quality of care.
And given that rhetoric, quite rightly,
we adhere to this idea of relationshipbased care.
And this is why the Royal Commissionhas mandated up to 3 hours
per resident per day of individualcare that comes in in 2022
(40:40):
simply going to need more workersto provide that
and if we're actually goingto be providing this in a meaningful way,
then we've got to invest a lot morein training and resourcing workers.
The other interesting thing to come outboth through time
within the royal commissionis the lack of accountability of providers
(41:01):
for the funding that they receive.
So we have limited aged care funding,nothing like the austerity.
We haven't sufferedthe austerity cuts you have in the UK,
but we all used to think, well,we just need more money.
In the aged care sector.
Increasingly, focus is now on governance,
on private providers,whether they be not for profits,
(41:23):
for profits, actuallyhaving some accountability for their funds
so that there is a large and vocal
consumer voice now around agedcare, older people in their families.
We want decent aged care.
Given the ageing population,the increasingly complex social,
(41:46):
but also clinical needs,we need a really good skill mix.
So these messages I thinkhave been received loudly and clearly
and the what was exposedduring COVID was appalling.
Care was unpreparedness of providerswho took the survey and said yes,
they were prepared for the secondwave of COVID with that quality agency.
(42:09):
And clearly they weren't.
They didn't even have basic infectioncontrol measures in place.
They were putting residents with COVIDin with residents who didn't have COVID.
I mean, extraordinary,extraordinary stuff.
But it's really, I think, made
the Australian community more broadly.
See, this is really important,and I think that's
(42:32):
we will see hopefully an improvement
in conditions and recognition of the agedcare workforce.
But I think we will alwayswe are going to be reliant on
migrant workersand we need to be looking at ways
in which we canthen provide pathways to permanency
and this model of havingbeing tied to an employer
(42:55):
that was tried in New Zealand,that was a model for bringing in
low skilled aged care workers once again,mainly from Pacific Islands,
and that was seen as creatingincredible vulnerability for workers.
So I think we need to make surethat we have,
you know, a supply of workerswho are attracted
by conditions in the sector,but also, if they wish.
(43:18):
Not everyonewishes a pathway to permanency.
I think that's going to be certainly inthe Australian context, really important.
Thank you very much, Sara.
I think that it's very wise wordsthat we want to propagate
and I'm sure that we can resonatewith a lot of your accommodations records.
What's the what'swhat do you think of the future,
(43:40):
especially with the specific contextthat you've got with the live in care,
which something not presentin Australia, for example, and, and,
you know, maybe the difficultiesin regulating that though,
that I know that it is quite relativelyhighly regulated industry.
For example when we compare it to Italywhere there is a huge reliance
of living care, it's very muchunregulated.
(44:04):
Yeah, that's, that's,that's a very interesting
and challenging question actually,how this is going to evolve in the
wake of the COVID, because I could see,at least in the Austrian case,
sort of
different contradictorysort of forces in place.
So on the one hand,I don't think the sort of the appetite
(44:24):
or the demand for this live in arrangementis going to diminish,
especially as we have also witnessed
in the industry, in the Austrian society,
a large increase in the labour
market, attachment of women
and and in Austria traditionally care
(44:45):
even more perhaps than in other countrieshas been sort of
placed firmly in the realm of the family.
And the 24 hour care solution was is also
also a way to outsourcepart of this from the family
and from working Austrian womento very often
(45:06):
working non Austrian women.
So I don't think it's this demand.
I think it's going to continue there.
It's going to continue particularlyalso in a society that values
very much ageing in place.
That's very is very muchthe maintains of older people
within their sort of communityenvironments
(45:27):
and for which for the time being
there is also a that's been at leasta steady supply of people interested
to work as 24 hour carers,even if this, as I said, has,
even if the profile of these carershas moved further,
further east and further further away
some extent from the from the EU.
(45:49):
So that's one, one aspect.
On the other hand,perhaps also because this is
this is a phenomenon that
pertains very muchalso to the neighbouring countries,
I could see that sooner or laterthere will be a call
for a greater coordination of policies
that that rely on migrant carers,although in this,
(46:11):
in this transnational movement of,of, of carers and,
and there are, there are alsosome indications, for example,
that this is not only a phenomenonof sort of eastern
born carers moving into Austriaand we've seen also in the past
that also nurses from Germany for example,were very keen
on working in some of the care homesin Austria because for example,
(46:33):
they perceive that to have much lessadministrative burden
when they, when they work in Austriathan they did in Germany.
And there's also quite a lot to be saidabout the recognition of competencies,
particularly in in, in in a contextsuch as the Austrian one where,
as you said,it's still relatively regulated.
So there is,
(46:55):
even for these migrants,
24 hour carers, there are some conditionsin terms of recognition of
of experience and of competenciesto work in this sector.
So I could see or a hope to seeat least a greater
attempt at
the this this this
this whole phenomenonof transnational care within the EU.
(47:17):
And I would sayeven for from outside the EU,
I could imagine that this would bealso something that might
play a role in terms of the negotiationof accession to the EU for some countries,
for example, coming from the formerfrom from Yugoslavia.
The danger, on the other hand,is that I think the pandemic
(47:38):
really put a spotlight on a long termcare on the low cost
model of long term care that we've hadin many countries in Europe.
But I think a lot of it
that's going to be also determining sortof in the period after the pandemic
in terms of how much this newfoundrelevance, policy
relevance and also public in the publicdiscourse
(48:00):
is going to carry forward.
And I'm thinking very, very much in termsof how much
I think this will be very much determined.
Also to what extent we will havethe return of austerity policies
or not to the European space,because this is going to,
I think, also shape very much
the ability that different countrieswill have to really invest the money
(48:22):
that is necessary to create proper
and resilient, long computer systems.
Thank you very much, Ricardo.
It's really interestingthat that relevant to the Brexit
discussion here,that even with the open border
and thinking about extension of the EUand the issues of competition
and migrant agency remain,this is something we didn't discuss it.
(48:46):
We need another podcast to talk about,but we we don't operate in a vacuum.
So countries have competitors
and migrants have their own agency
to go through the decision process,where to go and how long to stay.
And I think maybe I'll invite Agnes herejust to tell us
about the kind of current discussion,because the
(49:09):
the visa scheme which is called this way,but it doesn't really cover.
So she clear
there is of course the new levy in healthand of course the health and social care,
which is 1.5% extra net insurance taxationthat coming into effect in April.
But more and more we learn thatit's more health rather than social care.
And as I mentioned earlier
(49:31):
with Brexit from the first venueresponse offensive
on free movement for free,you let us know.
Remember if in the UK and these peoplehave survived through the settlement
was to stay at the same time
and there was some discussion,some debate around this venue.
These are the new immigration system.
(49:54):
It's very heavily on the old one,basically
cut off the birthrate, essentially Catholic social care,
most in social care
with not based on the education.
We have also the qualificationand also this was within the prep school
(50:14):
and even in certainthat both terms of senior
workers, the pay
levels in the sectorare really not sufficient.
Theoretically, it's possiblethat with the expected growth
in direct social care,but in reality it is very difficult.
(50:36):
But in the new system, the governmentconsiders the health care visa,
which I think slightly misleading the name
because in reality it is very,
very fourth visa
and they sayfrom the beginning of the year
are the intensiveapplication is only about
(50:57):
300 came from EU countries
and the majority of these are most likely
are probably for the NHS.
Effectively.
There's no direct
social care for peoplewho like to move to the UK
and this is kind of starting to showwe haven't seen before the impact
(51:19):
because it's going to unfoldover a longer period of time.
But the most recent data
shows that the non-EU staffers,
the share of peoplefrom outside the non-EU business.
Now the case has from about 5%then to 18%.
So that's close to the whole.
(51:40):
There are a lot ofI also mentioned the fact sectors
the temporary visa schemes,there are calls for social care
and the governmentto open this discussion.
So there is the migration advisorycommittee that they are this for this.
So it really remains to be seen.
(52:02):
It's very clearthere are very different interests
and how this needs to be balanced.
This is a very, very interesting period.
Absolutely.
It's a very, very difficult period.
And it's
there is no kind of easy winning cardsbecause even if we think about
(52:22):
a temporary visa or specific, these thatwe have to think about the implications
and whether we are taking a whole approachin terms of better jobs,
seeing really clear steps to improve jobs,
but realising thatthe contribution of migrants has to remain
part of thatand then how to integrate their
(52:43):
contribution in a decent wayand in a way that based on human rights,
really to recognisethat we're not putting them
in an extra vulnerable positionbecause they are already
in a vulnerable positionand can accept certain working conditions.
I think this is a topicthat is not going to go to sleep.
It's a topic that we are all kind oftrying to deal with in different countries
(53:04):
and it has been really greatto listen to the insight
from Austria and Australiaand I've been really grateful
to have you as partnersduring the Sustainable Care
Programme of Work,which is coming to an end this year.
So I just want to end by thankingyou greatly for your contribution
over the last few years for the programmeand also for your contribution today,
(53:29):
and I just give you the space to sayany final remarks that you might have.
So thank you verymuch for having you today.
Thank you.
Sharing This was a pleasure.It was a pleasure to be here.
It was a pleasurealso to listen to the experiences
of the UK and Australia as well, and
(53:50):
also, for my part, a big, big
commitment of the of the workthat you're doing in a sustainable care.
And I look forward to, to complete thethe project further.
Thank you, Ricardo.
Sara, we're very grateful to have you.
You have to deal with timedifference and timezone,
so we're very grateful to have you today.
(54:13):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Shereenand very nice to be here with you and
Agnes in particularand the work that you're coming
that you've been doingin the Sustainable Care Project.
It's so important.
And what I've been impressed by todayand to be hearing from Riccardo
about the Austrian situation is morethe commonalities
(54:34):
issues might be differently expressed,and there is obviously the historical
and the cultural backgrounds thatthis is a real, I think, a rich example of
we if we go
back to Fiona Williamsidea of intersecting regimes
so that they can producevery different outcomes.
But there is such a strong similarity,particularly in the space of time
(54:57):
care between of the countries that I feelI've met a lot from this in this podcast.
So thank you for letting me be part of it.
Thank you.
And thank you everybody for listeningto this podcast and we hope you enjoy it
and to look out for more of our outputsfrom the Sustainable Care program.
Thank you.
The Sustainable Care
team is exploring how care arrangementscurrently in crisis in parts of the UK
can be made sustainable and deliverwellbeing outcomes
in this sustainable careand COVID 19 podcast series.
Our researchers and special guests discusshow the pandemic has impacted
(00:35):
the different parts of the care sectorwe are studying.
Welcome everyone
to one of our Sustainable Careand COVID podcasts.
(00:58):
Today,I am very pleased to welcome you to talk
about a very important topicand timely topic
of home care migrant workers
in the context of Brexitin the UK and COVID across the globe.
I am delighted to have with me
great guests who have done excellent workin this area.
(01:21):
First, Professor Sara Charlesworth,who is a Professor of gender work
and Regulation at their RMIT Universityin Australia.
Her recent research is focussed
on aged care workersin cross-national perspectives,
also focusing on migrant workersand decent work.
Welcome, Sara.
(01:42):
I'm very pleased to be here.
Thank you very much, Sara.
And we also have Dr.
Ricardo Rodrigues,who is the head of health
and care unitat the European Centre in Vienna.
He has carried out comparative researchon a number of areas pertaining to long
term care, including working conditionsof migrant and native care workers.
(02:03):
Welcome. Thank you for coming, Ricardo.
Thank you very much for having me.
And we have from our very own team, Dr.
Agnes Time Penny, who is a researcher,and she's currently
at the Institute of Public Care at OxfordBrookes University.
Welcome, Agnes. Hi, everyone.
And I am Professor Shireen Hussain,professor of health and social care
(02:26):
policy at the London School of Hygieneand Tropical Medicine.
And I led the stream of worklooking at migrants care
workers in homecare in the UK in the context of Brexit.
So welcome to this timely story.
And we all know that countries acrossthe globe
have escalating demand for long term care.
(02:48):
With particular needs for home care,where people prefer
to receive care,where they continue living.
But we know alsothat most countries have faced,
you know, facing huge challengesin recruiting enough workers.
And we know that migrant skilled workersform a significant contribution
to this work.
(03:09):
However, the issue does notdoes not happen with its own challenges.
So I'm just going to take this opportunityto ask our great guest
to give us a little bit of contextabout their own countries
and about the contributionof migrant workers
and the type of contributions,perhaps the challenges,
but also the advantages that they bring.
(03:31):
So I might startwith the neighbouring Austria
and ask Ricardo to give us a little bitof a background and context.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. So.
Austria has relied very heavilyon migrant carers
as part of its model for longterm care provision,
(03:53):
dating back really to the late nineties
when Castro care benefits were implementedand men and families
developed this solutionin which they directly hired
migrant carers from neighbouring countries
to act as live in carers
with their relativesthat were in need of care.
(04:15):
This has in the meantimebeen legalised at the
at the end of the past decade
and still we have nowcurrently an estimated
60,000 migrant carers
that workas these so-called 24 hour carers.
So they usually work aroundsort of fortnight ships shifts,
(04:36):
staying in people's own homes and usually
working as self-employed
or with contractswith sort of brokering agencies.
In parallel we have also a
large number of migrant carers working inthe sort of more informal care sector.
(04:56):
We don't have very good data on on onthese migrant care workers,
but we've run a recent surveyand we found that around
25% of all workers working inboth residential care and home care
in Austria were migrantmaking care workers.
And we also then carried out some researchin terms of differences
(05:19):
in working conditions between these
these workers and native workers.
So overall, migrant carers form
a very important, I would say,
part of the Austrian sort of approachto long term care.
And this is also very much drivenby the wage differentials
(05:40):
that exist between Austriaand the neighbouring countries, but also
it's very much driven
by the geographical location of Austria,which is very much in the heart of Europe
and therefore can more easilysort of attract.
And these these rotating migrant carers
to to address its care needs.
(06:01):
Thank you.
Very encouraged. It's a clearlythere is a form of reliance.
It's a question of the workforceis coming from
migrant workersthe contribution of migrants
and is that really importantto the sustainability of the whole system?
And it was really interesting as well
that you saidabout the circular nature of migrants and
(06:22):
and the importance of the livein care work
which is somethingmaybe not exactly the same here in the UK,
but it's really interesting to seehow is that facilitated by Cash for Care
and the kind of bigger policiesof ageing in place and marketisation.
So I wonder how the situation isin Australia.
Eric.
(06:43):
Thank you for sharing.
Well, it's a very different context.
Australia, unlike offshore, is an islandand that in itself
that kind ofwe call this the tyranny of distance
and that's has created, I suppose,
opportunities and also currently barriersto market workers.
We start to a countrythat's relied on permanent
(07:03):
migrationand particularly post-war migration.
And it used to be the case that certainlyin homecare a large proportion
of healthcare workers particularly camefrom England, Ireland, New Zealand.
That has changed dramatically over time.
We now see many more homecare workers from Southern Asia
and at the same timeour migration settings have changed.
(07:26):
So we've moved from a countryof permanent migration
to much more of a European model,perhaps of the storico
model of guest worker temporary migration.
So increasingly, the migrantswho are working as residential
care and in-homecare are arriving on temporary visas.
And because the work is whateverqualifications they hold with,
(07:50):
the work that they're doingis classified as low skilled,
they are preventing themfrom attaining permanency.
So they're in a difficult situation.
Perhaps a distinguishing featurein Australia
is we've relied on some particulartemporary visa programs.
International students, for example,make up a large proportion
of migrant workers in residential agedcare and working holidaymakers
(08:15):
whereby people might arrivefrom a variety of different countries.
They're allowed to spend a year heretravelling,
but if they work then theythey're allowed to stay an extra year.
So we rely a lot on temporary labour.
So despite the very large proportionof migrants, so we're sitting at over
50% of migrants in residential agedcare, 37% in home care.
(08:41):
Australians don't tend to think about
or haven't thought about migrants.
But when the borders slammedshut with COVID
and we have a huge issuesbecause international students
weren't coming anymore,then increasingly the providers
or the employersare turning to the government
to adjust migration policysettings to increase migration.
(09:06):
Thank you.
Thank you, Sarah and Ricardo.
It's really clear how the geographyand history plays a big part here.
And it's interestingwhen we think about the UK position
because it's somehow the pathwayto the inclusion of migrants
and allowing and opening the doorto migrants have taking different forms
(09:27):
relation to the broaderimmigration policies
that from relyingin the colonial histories
and having the work permitsand relying on nurses coming
perhaps from the Philippinesand from India to the open access
and the EU marketsand maybe a little bit of the model
that Austria,you know, Ricardo was talking about.
(09:49):
But now we are heading to Brexit wherethings are quite going to be different
and they're looking interestingly to,
you know, ideas like the temporary visa.
And there are lots of lessonsto be learnt here.
Agnes, you've been involvedin this project for several years,
which is the Sustainable Care Projectand part of that work, you know,
(10:11):
we've been collecting data and informationand views about that.
Do you want to tell us
a little bit about the projectand then maybe reflect
in what Sarah and Ricardohave said to tell us
where the UK is sitting within this,within these dynamics.
So we started our sustainable project
in the UK and then a teamthat was able to use Brexit.
(10:35):
So it was clearthat the UK was leaving the EU,
but at that timethere was a lot of uncertainty,
especially around what would happenwith free movement of labour.
So our research project
took place in this really kind of fluidlychanging and very uncertain context.
(10:56):
Sometimes it was difficult
to balance, but at the same timeit also had benefits because we could
look at the sector at the time of changeand kind of opinions and positions.
Very 43 states have growth methodsto conduct their research.
One was a reviewof the existing literature
(11:17):
and data within the review
of the outcomes and the challenges
of migrant labour in homecare in the UK,which was published.
We understand that some of the dataand skills for CARE publishes
data on the nationality of the workforce.
(11:37):
So maybe the question of trendsand changes in that data.
The other part,as I referred to both of the survey
that the surveys, the survey of people,
they are stakeholdersin the different parts of the sector.
So we invited experts, we identify very,very soon social care
(12:00):
experts or immigration policy experts
and also migrant rights organisations.
So we asked them about what they thinkthe future
of migrant workersin social care could look like
in the first wave of
this survey took part in 3019.
(12:24):
So before COVIDand before we had a very clear idea
of what might happenwith the immigration system based Brexit.
The second wave of the Delfisurvey took place in 2021.
There was kind of like an emerging pictureof what the immigration system
might look likeand also very importantly with
(12:47):
the COVID pandemic was was really in
this wave of the pandemic,in the lockdowns, in some of the industry.
And then the third very important
part was speaking to different peoplewho are affected
differentlyby immigration and social care.
So we spoke to provider organisations,STO managers,
(13:11):
owners of homecareand living care services.
How these kind of impending changesmight have them, their operation
and what their expectations were
and what sort of immigration systemwould work for them.
We also spoke to some families,the legal of social care
and the particular who who go on
(13:34):
social care, offering supportprovided by migrant workers,
voice their fearsand thoughts of and birth.
And with this both migrantsnever faced them stay.
So then this was another very
important that was part of our big series.
(13:55):
Thanks. Thanks, Agnes.
So it seems that the three countriesthat we're talking about
look at migrant workers as a core elementin the provision of care.
So we know in the UKwe rely actually on data that is collected
not from the whole sector,collected from parts of the formal sector,
and it indicates that overthe last 20 years at least,
(14:17):
there has been a contributionof at least 20% of the workforce.
And what was interesting,
the UK has been through huge changesin immigration policy.
So as I mentioned, there was the workpermit schemes before 2003.
Then there was the expansion of the EU.
Then now we are facing Brexit.
And what does it tell us thatthere is a core element and gap
(14:39):
in our supply of workforcethat has always been
filled by migrant workers, regardlesswhere they are coming from
or the pathwayand journey to come to the UK.
So, so we kind of startingfrom a similar point
and obviously in the UK, unlike Australia,I've got a lot of information
on love and care.
We don't have much information about that.
(15:01):
It's all anecdotes,but we can see that this is a growing area
and a growing area for the recruitmentof migrant workers as well.
So clearlythere has been a lot of interest
and a lot of utility of migrantsin the long term care sector.
What was rather shocking throughthe whole systems is the pandemic
that has come and closed and shut bordersand suddenly give this wake up call
(15:26):
to actually you can't continue relyingor if you want to continue to rely
and you have to thinkabout the means to do that.
So so maybe we can start firstwith the impacts of Corbett.
So what happened?
What changes that countries have takento respond to, to cope with the realities
of Corbett, bearing in mindthe implications of migrant workers?
(15:50):
So I'm just goingto invite Ricardo to start.
Thank you.
Sherry.
So when COVID 19 hit, Austria was
also very early on implementedquite stringent lockdown measures.
And this, of course, includedalso the closure of
of borders very early on in the pandemic.
(16:13):
At the same time, because of the relevanceof this migrant care model,
there were concentrated efforts
to try to establish channels throughwhich migrant carers
could still continueto come to Austria or remain in Austria,
and thus sort of fulfilthe care needs of other people.
(16:35):
So fundamental.
This took a number of timein a number of initiatives.
On the one hand, some of the migrantcare workers that were already in Austria
when the borders were closed,they were allowed to extend their rotas.
So usually they stay,as I said, one fortnight with each family.
They were allowed to extend thisand they received financial compensation
(16:57):
up to €500 for this extension
of their unforeseenextension of their rota in in Austria.
At the same time, a number of
trains and charter flights
were organised to the sending countries,so mostly Romania
(17:17):
and Slovak Republic, for example,
with the intentionto bring in the migrant carers
that were sort of stranded,so to speak, in their countries of origin.
And these migrant carersthen were placed on quarantine on arrival
so that they could then continue to work
(17:38):
in the houses of the families for the
for the uses they were working with.
At the same time, as I said,a lot of these migrant care workers,
the ones that liveor that provide care in people's own homes
and they're self-employed
and they were able to benefitfrom a federal scheme
that was implemented in Austriain which people who were self-employed
(18:01):
and had seen a reduction in their incomeduring the pandemic could apply for up
to €2,500 per month of federal support.
So this was kind ofin a way on the positive side
of the reaction to the pandemicor to at least to the closure.
Fundamentallyof the end of the of the borders.
(18:23):
But at the same time,these measures also clearly, I think,
shown the limits a bit also
of this migrant care model in Austria,in the sense that, for example,
very few of the migrant carers
could actually benefit from this support
for self-employed peoplebecause their income
(18:47):
was just not sufficient for themto qualify, for example, to pay taxes,
which meant that they were then unable,they didn't have a tax number,
so they were unable to benefitfrom this, from this, from this support.
At the same time, and because they areself-employed, the majority
of the migrant carers, for example, do notare not covered by the sickness benefit.
(19:10):
So they would have to it's onlyafter the 43rd
day of sicknessthat they would receive any sort of
health benefit unless they payadditional social insurance, which many
of them don't.
And this
obviously was quite an issuein the context of a
of a pandemic
(19:31):
to finalise.
Also, for example, the quarantine period
in which migrant came as placewhen arriving in Austria through these
formalised channelsof chartered trains and charter flights.
This was also unpaid.
So at the surface Athere was a coordinated response
by the authorities in Austria to keepthe migrant care worker model running.
(19:55):
But at the same time, this response,I would say
built very much on the inequalities,still very much on the quite
a lot of the issuesthat were coming already from behind
in terms of this migrant careworker model.
Thank you, Ricardo.This is really interesting.
And you brought in the new ones
and also great to the surfacethat we talking about a sector
(20:18):
that does not followthe normal kind of work and employment
conditions that when policy Putin assumes
and hence maybe the policy responsedoesn't have the positive effect
because it's basicallynot addressing the structure and the
inequalities within the structurethat you have describe,
because maybe a lot of people don't know
(20:39):
the level of fragmentation of workand types of contract
and the pay that doesn't give you certainallowances, etc..
So I wonderwhat's happening with Australia.
We know that that that that may bethe response to COVID was quite strict,
that Australia was one of the firstto close border and to
(20:59):
to do all these lockdowns.
This or I would be really keen to getyour feedback and reflections on this.
So let me thank Shereenwill we shut our borders,
closed them shut in February last year.
They're still not formally opened, apartfrom some exceptions.
And certainly people who are workingin the care sector,
(21:20):
bugs in residential aged careand home care who are on temporary visas
were very badly done by the government.
The federal government providedquite a bit of income support
to workers who lost hours of work, workerswho lost jobs and
with the shuttering of residential agedcare,
the diminishing in terms of servicesprovided to home care clients.
(21:45):
A lot of workers lost hours of work,a lot of workers lost their jobs.
And so a decision was madesimply to provide no support whatsoever
to people on temporary visasso that that was one tangible effect.
The complaints that certainly unionsbrought to the fore
and unions haven't been particularlygood around migrant workers.
(22:06):
They don't focus on them
despite the fact that they area very large proportion of the workforce.
But the big issue for all home care
workers was access to PPE.
And just recently in the last few monthssince jumping ahead,
that COVID vaccination has been mandatedin residential aged care.
(22:27):
It's been left to the states.
And being a federal system,the federal government
is in charge of aged care,but the states are in charge of health.
So in Victoria,where I live, the Victorian Government
has now just mandated home care workers
need to be fully vaccinatedin order to continue to provide services.
(22:47):
And the Federal Governmentis now requiring providers
to provide details of the vaccinationstatus of their workers.
However,we don't know any other characteristics
of those workers,so it would be impossible to tell.
For example,if there has been a special reach out
to migrant aged care workers
(23:08):
that has in terms of migrant communities.
But our main problem in Australiais because
we appear to containCOVID in its first wave.
We took a
long time to get to vaccinationand when we realised
vaccination was important,it was a huge issue of supply.
So while residential aged care
(23:30):
residents were designatedas a priority group and so were workers,
in fact, when the rollout occurred,workers were left out of that.
And in home careit's been even slower back
to research like myself, it'sincredibly difficult to get any data about
the characteristics of workers who've losthours, workers who have been vaccinated.
(23:54):
In terms of what's happening now,
we are moving to open our borders,even though we're in the middle of a delta
wave and the programthat was put in place to bring in Pacific
Islanders to work in agedcare in response to employer complaints
that there weren't enoughworkers has just been reactivated.
So 50 workers from the Kiribati islands
(24:18):
have just been flownto regional Queensland.
It's very unclearwhat conditions await those workers
when they arrivein these regional communities and I think
that is of a concernand just following some of the debates
in the UK, the same debatesthat have been happening here,
if we need more workers, the argument goes
(24:39):
we should provide better wagesand conditions.
You know, following the debates in the UK,the Prime Minister's been putting
forward a similar argument to not reallyadjusting migration settings.
The particular pressure in Australiais that we've recently
had a royal commissioninto aged aged care, quality and safety
and it's now recommended mandated carerschoose the resident,
(25:03):
which means that we would needto quadruple our current workforce.
But in my view, and this is particularlythe case, in-home care
model of work organisation
which provides employerswith numerical flexibility,
it keeps workers onshort hours of work, is less
underemployment,particularly for home care workers.
(25:26):
And employers seemed reluctantto offer more hours of work.
And we know from survey data
that migrants in particular,not surprisingly, want to work
longer hours than do locally born workers
because they need to set up
homes,they need to support their families, etc.
And yet that's a real issue,particularly in home care.
(25:47):
You can have incredibly fragmented timeschedules.
You can work foras little as an hour at a time
without any guaranteeof any further hours.
So thethe ongoing issues that face the sector,
but they're particularly acutefor migrant workers.
And I suppose what covered one of the
(26:09):
lessons of COVIDwas that you were second class citizen
if you weren't locally born,went on a permanent visa.
Thank you, Sara.
And it's really clear
that, you know, the difficultiesthat faced by migrants
within these kind of fragmented systemsand unprotected systems,
(26:29):
I guess in the UK, response to COVID
is specific to longterm care have been has been very little.
In fact, it has been criticised
not to take into considerationthe effects on the sector.
So there has been some delayseven in guidance to care homes,
(26:50):
home care has remained in the blind spots.
There hasn't been really guidanceabout how to meet shortages.
But what was interestingthat happened in the UK that we were
we were discussing Brexit in relationto closing borders
and obviously there have been some effortsto maintain
(27:10):
the stock of EU, particularly EU migrants
that already in the countrythrough the EU settlement scheme,
many of whom were workingin the care sector.
But one of the main policy
and strategies that we've done as areaction to COVID was the furlough scheme
that the government introduced,which is paying 80% of the salary
(27:33):
or income of workerswho have to stop working due to lockdown.
So we had really big lockdownsand certain sectors
has been impacted dramatically,particularly the retail sector.
The hospitality.
And what's happenedis that there was this interesting
opposite directionflows with Brexit and prior to the call
(27:54):
that there was a lot of peopleleaving the country
because they weren't certainabout what's going to happen.
Kelvin happenedand then a lot of the local workers
were available in in the marketsbecause of the lockdown and closure.
So the social caresector had a period of great recruitment
at the beginning of the COVID, and thatkind of delayed the thinking for a bit.
(28:17):
So we did research in this areaat the time
and people will saywe're recruiting for a post
and we've got like 80 fantastic CVSand we can pick the best.
But that was very short lived.
It was very temporary.
But what it did, it's kind of delayed itthinking about, okay,
what's going to happen when peoplego back to the UK didn't put in place
(28:40):
strong financial compensationfor any of the social care sector,
unlike, for example, hazard paythat we've seen in Canada.
There has been some extra money coming,particularly from Scotland,
Wales, Northern Ireland,but not much in in the English side,
the single site restrictionsand ensuring infection control.
(29:01):
Again, that was not mandatory.
Like other countries,it was just recommendations.
So and in that narrative,migrant workers were completely absent,
that there was not a discussionthat is specific to migrants care workers.
So the UK is actually nowfacing a perfect storm because,
you know, people going back to workwho were kind of
(29:24):
in the in the local marketand there has been now suddenly,
you know, organisation care organisationsseeing a.
Huge.
Level of recruitment challenges,huge shortages.
And it's unclearhow how that could be resolved.
And the discussion, Sarah, you know,you put it eloquently about better jobs,
(29:46):
which is fantastic, but we can't seehow the better job is going to happen
and how we're going to happenfast enough to attract the workers
and the reality of population ageingwhere you don't have that surplus anyway.
So there is a limit to this attraction.
Even if you have a very good job,you can attract a certain number.
But we're runningat a very low unemployment rates anyway,
(30:08):
so it's around, it's less than 5%.
So you have a little bit of room, butnot a huge and we are thinking about that.
You need 20 to 25% of the workforce,which is estimated
at 1.6 million jobs in the UK.
Then we're talking about huge numbers.
So I think thisthis hasn't been really thought through.
And I guess within all these discussionsat the higher policy level,
(30:32):
nobody or very, very few people talkabout the implications on the individual.
So people who were able to come from, say,South Africa to do a bit of work here
in the UK for three or four weeksand then go back or three months
and go back, that was not possibleand that had a lot of implications
on the wellbeing of migrants.
(30:53):
So maybe we take them,you know, we take our discussion
towardsthinking about the humans doing the work.
So these people that we rely on,they are either
presented in the policywithout a clear understanding
of their conditions or completely absentfrom the policy picture.
And we talk about the evidencethat we have as researchers
(31:17):
around their particular working conditions
and will be situating thiswithin a really difficult sector.
So it's not like it's rosyfor everybody else, but realising
that migrant workershave an extra layer of implications
that have, you know, affect themadversely.
So Ricardo, you have been reallyyour centre have been really active
(31:40):
in doing surveysand talking to migrant workers
and it would be really insightfulfor us to see you give us some findings
from your recent work,particularly in that period of COVID.
Yeah, thank you very much.
I mean, that's
I think that's a very good pointthat that that you raise,
because as I was talking about,some of the measures
that were implemented,such as this extension of the rotas,
(32:02):
for example, in in Austriafollowing the closure of the borders,
of course, what this sort of
what this didn't considerwas the fact that
a lot of these migrant care workershave families away from Austria,
have also found the responsibilitiesaway from Austria, not only
(32:23):
in terms of the parents
of these care workersthat they probably will be looking after
during this fortnight periodswhere they are in their home countries,
but also children.
And because this is very typicallythe sandwich
generation that has really
caring responsibilitiesand this is of course
these are mostly also womenand this is something that I think
(32:46):
has been very much overlookedin the discussion
of this of this of this
model that relies a lot on migrant carers.
And besides that,
we've we've carried out the surveyon the working conditions of
migrant carersin England in the formal sector,
(33:08):
so in residential care homes, in the homecare sector and we compare this
with native native workers.
And what we found is curiouslyat the first layer of comparison,
we didn't find much in terms
of differences in working conditionsbetween migrants and natives.
So that was a sort of positivelysurprised result.
(33:29):
We got,
of course, a lot of this was
drivenby the fact that, as Sarah mentioned
before, a lot of the migrant care workers,they really want to work longer hours.
They want to sort of save
and earn as much money as possibleso that they can send this back home.
They also tend to be younger.
And as this sort of young migrant effect
(33:50):
that we see very much also
in our in our survey sample.
And the other aspectthat then we were able to uncover
when we looked a little bit more carefulinto these differences
in working conditions,is that although we didn't find
significant differences between
EU migrants and native workers,we found quite significant differences
(34:13):
between non-EU migrants and both
native and EU migrant workers.
And we did this also togetherwith some colleagues in Sweden
with a similar survey.
And curiously, even though the countries
of origin outsidethe EU were very dissimilar between
Austria and and Sweden,we had similar findings there as well.
(34:37):
So this I think is an aspectalso that we should bear very much in mind
sort of thishow how the migrant care worker
model intersects with these different sortof migration regimes as well.
And I was I was thinking very much of thisas listening to the both the Australian
and the UK sort of context.
(35:00):
And this is something that is perhapsgoing to become even more relevant
also in the context of Austria,because we've seen already that
there has been a change in the profileof the migrant care workers we have.
So up until a couple of years ago,the majority of the migrant
carers were really comingfrom Slovakia, from Hungary.
So there's a really neighbouring countrieswhere it's relatively easy to commute.
(35:25):
So to give you an idea between Bratislavaand Vienna, there's only about 45 minutes
a distance with the carand now about three years ago
it was the first time that carers fromRomania became
the single most
relevant groupamong these migrant care workers.
We've also witnessed
(35:47):
with little data that we
have an increase in care workers
that are coming from further placesin Eastern Europe,
many of them not covered by thethat are not members of the EU.
And this, of course raises evenmore issues, not only in terms of what is
what is the effect of these longer
(36:08):
spells outside of home,but also in terms of social protection.
There are a number of
mechanismsthat guarantee social that the guarantee
also the transfer of pensionrights, for example, within the EU.
And these are not always the same
when we talk about countriesthat are outside of the of the EU.
(36:29):
One final aspect I would like to highlightin terms of the wellbeing
of migrant carers and I think particularlyin the context of the pandemic, is
and so a lot of these migrant carers,as I said, they provide care in people's
own homes, which means that they were alsoas socially isolated
as the older peoplethat they were caring for themselves.
(36:52):
And this was againsomething that there was a lot of emphasis
placed in Austrian, rightly so,on, on the increase in loneliness
and social isolation of older people.
But I don't think there was a
similar concern,a similar sort of spotlight
placed on the migrant carersthat were sharing
the houses with these same older people
(37:15):
and that were not only at a heightenedrisk of infection as well,
but were displaced from their families,from their social networks.
So for for whomthe question of psychological well-being
arising from isolation, I think was
is very, very, very much relevant.
Thanks, Ricardo.
You know, all what it said resonateswith a lot of things in the UK.
(37:38):
But it was really interesting as well
when you said about the differentialsin relation to being EU or non EU migrants
and the similaritiesthat you found with Sweden,
although the country of the countryof origin are different
and just thinking about the future,how we see this moving forward
in terms of moving post-COVID, hopefullythings will return to normal one day.
(38:02):
It's not going to be normal.
It's going to be the new normal.
But that may be calledit have made us all pose
and thinkbecause just kind of nothing impacts.
And hopefully maybethat would would shape the future policy.
So as research,a strong research is in this field.
What would be your adviceto the kind of future
(38:24):
looking policies in relation to aged careand the role of migrants within that?
I'll I'll start by Sarah,
because I know you're very involvedin this policy and and I know
that you have been working in this areafor, well, for many decades
around the bigger pictureof employment conditions and better jobs
where we go from here, ideallyWhat's your advice for policymakers?
(38:49):
Well, it's interesting, Shireen.
I mean, if there can be a silverlining of COVID, it really shone a light,
particularly on residential aged care,unfortunately, much less on hunting.
But how vital it was,
how terrifying it was
to have certainly in Victoriain our second wave,
we had a very high deathwere relatively high compared to the UK,
(39:12):
but relatively high death ratesin residential aged care.
That's where most of our deaths were.
So there has been a graspby the community at large, but certainly
perhaps reluctantly by the
Federal Government that something hasto happen around wages and conditions.
So for example, I'm involvedas an expert witness in two different work
(39:35):
value cases under our industrialrelations system, which are seeking
to increase the wages of frontline
residential aged care workersand home care workers by $5 an hour.
Now, whether or not this is going to besuccessful is a moot point.
But the royal commissionis probably the first of 20 inquiries
(39:57):
we've had into the aged care sectorover the last 20 years.
To actually say this has to be addressed.
Yes, we may well need migration,but until we can prove
providing decent wages and conditionsa career structure,
we are not going to be ableto provide the care because that's also
(40:17):
the other thing that came out of the royalCommission was the poor quality of care.
And given that rhetoric, quite rightly,
we adhere to this idea of relationshipbased care.
And this is why the Royal Commissionhas mandated up to 3 hours
per resident per day of individualcare that comes in in 2022
(40:40):
simply going to need more workersto provide that
and if we're actually goingto be providing this in a meaningful way,
then we've got to invest a lot morein training and resourcing workers.
The other interesting thing to come outboth through time
within the royal commissionis the lack of accountability of providers
(41:01):
for the funding that they receive.
So we have limited aged care funding,nothing like the austerity.
We haven't sufferedthe austerity cuts you have in the UK,
but we all used to think, well,we just need more money.
In the aged care sector.
Increasingly, focus is now on governance,
on private providers,whether they be not for profits,
(41:23):
for profits, actuallyhaving some accountability for their funds
so that there is a large and vocal
consumer voice now around agedcare, older people in their families.
We want decent aged care.
Given the ageing population,the increasingly complex social,
(41:46):
but also clinical needs,we need a really good skill mix.
So these messages I thinkhave been received loudly and clearly
and the what was exposedduring COVID was appalling.
Care was unpreparedness of providerswho took the survey and said yes,
they were prepared for the secondwave of COVID with that quality agency.
(42:09):
And clearly they weren't.
They didn't even have basic infectioncontrol measures in place.
They were putting residents with COVIDin with residents who didn't have COVID.
I mean, extraordinary,extraordinary stuff.
But it's really, I think, made
the Australian community more broadly.
See, this is really important,and I think that's
(42:32):
we will see hopefully an improvement
in conditions and recognition of the agedcare workforce.
But I think we will alwayswe are going to be reliant on
migrant workersand we need to be looking at ways
in which we canthen provide pathways to permanency
and this model of havingbeing tied to an employer
(42:55):
that was tried in New Zealand,that was a model for bringing in
low skilled aged care workers once again,mainly from Pacific Islands,
and that was seen as creatingincredible vulnerability for workers.
So I think we need to make surethat we have,
you know, a supply of workerswho are attracted
by conditions in the sector,but also, if they wish.
(43:18):
Not everyonewishes a pathway to permanency.
I think that's going to be certainly inthe Australian context, really important.
Thank you very much, Sara.
I think that it's very wise wordsthat we want to propagate
and I'm sure that we can resonatewith a lot of your accommodations records.
What's the what'swhat do you think of the future,
(43:40):
especially with the specific contextthat you've got with the live in care,
which something not presentin Australia, for example, and, and,
you know, maybe the difficultiesin regulating that though,
that I know that it is quite relativelyhighly regulated industry.
For example when we compare it to Italywhere there is a huge reliance
of living care, it's very muchunregulated.
(44:04):
Yeah, that's, that's,that's a very interesting
and challenging question actually,how this is going to evolve in the
wake of the COVID, because I could see,at least in the Austrian case,
sort of
different contradictorysort of forces in place.
So on the one hand,I don't think the sort of the appetite
(44:24):
or the demand for this live in arrangementis going to diminish,
especially as we have also witnessed
in the industry, in the Austrian society,
a large increase in the labour
market, attachment of women
and and in Austria traditionally care
(44:45):
even more perhaps than in other countrieshas been sort of
placed firmly in the realm of the family.
And the 24 hour care solution was is also
also a way to outsourcepart of this from the family
and from working Austrian womento very often
(45:06):
working non Austrian women.
So I don't think it's this demand.
I think it's going to continue there.
It's going to continue particularlyalso in a society that values
very much ageing in place.
That's very is very muchthe maintains of older people
within their sort of communityenvironments
(45:27):
and for which for the time being
there is also a that's been at leasta steady supply of people interested
to work as 24 hour carers,even if this, as I said, has,
even if the profile of these carershas moved further,
further east and further further away
some extent from the from the EU.
(45:49):
So that's one, one aspect.
On the other hand,perhaps also because this is
this is a phenomenon that
pertains very muchalso to the neighbouring countries,
I could see that sooner or laterthere will be a call
for a greater coordination of policies
that that rely on migrant carers,although in this,
(46:11):
in this transnational movement of,of, of carers and,
and there are, there are alsosome indications, for example,
that this is not only a phenomenonof sort of eastern
born carers moving into Austriaand we've seen also in the past
that also nurses from Germany for example,were very keen
on working in some of the care homesin Austria because for example,
(46:33):
they perceive that to have much lessadministrative burden
when they, when they work in Austriathan they did in Germany.
And there's also quite a lot to be saidabout the recognition of competencies,
particularly in in, in in a contextsuch as the Austrian one where,
as you said,it's still relatively regulated.
So there is,
(46:55):
even for these migrants,
24 hour carers, there are some conditionsin terms of recognition of
of experience and of competenciesto work in this sector.
So I could see or a hope to seeat least a greater
attempt at
the this this this
this whole phenomenonof transnational care within the EU.
(47:17):
And I would sayeven for from outside the EU,
I could imagine that this would bealso something that might
play a role in terms of the negotiationof accession to the EU for some countries,
for example, coming from the formerfrom from Yugoslavia.
The danger, on the other hand,is that I think the pandemic
(47:38):
really put a spotlight on a long termcare on the low cost
model of long term care that we've hadin many countries in Europe.
But I think a lot of it
that's going to be also determining sortof in the period after the pandemic
in terms of how much this newfoundrelevance, policy
relevance and also public in the publicdiscourse
(48:00):
is going to carry forward.
And I'm thinking very, very much in termsof how much
I think this will be very much determined.
Also to what extent we will havethe return of austerity policies
or not to the European space,because this is going to,
I think, also shape very much
the ability that different countrieswill have to really invest the money
(48:22):
that is necessary to create proper
and resilient, long computer systems.
Thank you very much, Ricardo.
It's really interestingthat that relevant to the Brexit
discussion here,that even with the open border
and thinking about extension of the EUand the issues of competition
and migrant agency remain,this is something we didn't discuss it.
(48:46):
We need another podcast to talk about,but we we don't operate in a vacuum.
So countries have competitors
and migrants have their own agency
to go through the decision process,where to go and how long to stay.
And I think maybe I'll invite Agnes herejust to tell us
about the kind of current discussion,because the
(49:09):
the visa scheme which is called this way,but it doesn't really cover.
So she clear
there is of course the new levy in healthand of course the health and social care,
which is 1.5% extra net insurance taxationthat coming into effect in April.
But more and more we learn thatit's more health rather than social care.
And as I mentioned earlier
(49:31):
with Brexit from the first venueresponse offensive
on free movement for free,you let us know.
Remember if in the UK and these peoplehave survived through the settlement
was to stay at the same time
and there was some discussion,some debate around this venue.
These are the new immigration system.
(49:54):
It's very heavily on the old one,basically
cut off the birthrate, essentially Catholic social care,
most in social care
with not based on the education.
We have also the qualificationand also this was within the prep school
(50:14):
and even in certainthat both terms of senior
workers, the pay
levels in the sectorare really not sufficient.
Theoretically, it's possiblethat with the expected growth
in direct social care,but in reality it is very difficult.
(50:36):
But in the new system, the governmentconsiders the health care visa,
which I think slightly misleading the name
because in reality it is very,
very fourth visa
and they sayfrom the beginning of the year
are the intensiveapplication is only about
(50:57):
300 came from EU countries
and the majority of these are most likely
are probably for the NHS.
Effectively.
There's no direct
social care for peoplewho like to move to the UK
and this is kind of starting to showwe haven't seen before the impact
(51:19):
because it's going to unfoldover a longer period of time.
But the most recent data
shows that the non-EU staffers,
the share of peoplefrom outside the non-EU business.
Now the case has from about 5%then to 18%.
So that's close to the whole.
(51:40):
There are a lot ofI also mentioned the fact sectors
the temporary visa schemes,there are calls for social care
and the governmentto open this discussion.
So there is the migration advisorycommittee that they are this for this.
So it really remains to be seen.
(52:02):
It's very clearthere are very different interests
and how this needs to be balanced.
This is a very, very interesting period.
Absolutely.
It's a very, very difficult period.
And it's
there is no kind of easy winning cardsbecause even if we think about
(52:22):
a temporary visa or specific, these thatwe have to think about the implications
and whether we are taking a whole approachin terms of better jobs,
seeing really clear steps to improve jobs,
but realising thatthe contribution of migrants has to remain
part of thatand then how to integrate their
(52:43):
contribution in a decent wayand in a way that based on human rights,
really to recognisethat we're not putting them
in an extra vulnerable positionbecause they are already
in a vulnerable positionand can accept certain working conditions.
I think this is a topicthat is not going to go to sleep.
It's a topic that we are all kind oftrying to deal with in different countries
(53:04):
and it has been really greatto listen to the insight
from Austria and Australiaand I've been really grateful
to have you as partnersduring the Sustainable Care
Programme of Work,which is coming to an end this year.
So I just want to end by thankingyou greatly for your contribution
over the last few years for the programmeand also for your contribution today,
(53:29):
and I just give you the space to sayany final remarks that you might have.
So thank you verymuch for having you today.
Thank you.
Sharing This was a pleasure.It was a pleasure to be here.
It was a pleasurealso to listen to the experiences
of the UK and Australia as well, and
(53:50):
also, for my part, a big, big
commitment of the of the workthat you're doing in a sustainable care.
And I look forward to, to complete thethe project further.
Thank you, Ricardo.
Sara, we're very grateful to have you.
You have to deal with timedifference and timezone,
so we're very grateful to have you today.
(54:13):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Shereenand very nice to be here with you and
Agnes in particularand the work that you're coming
that you've been doingin the Sustainable Care Project.
It's so important.
And what I've been impressed by todayand to be hearing from Riccardo
about the Austrian situation is morethe commonalities
(54:34):
issues might be differently expressed,and there is obviously the historical
and the cultural backgrounds thatthis is a real, I think, a rich example of
we if we go
back to Fiona Williamsidea of intersecting regimes
so that they can producevery different outcomes.
But there is such a strong similarity,particularly in the space of time
(54:57):
care between of the countries that I feelI've met a lot from this in this podcast.
So thank you for letting me be part of it.
Thank you.
And thank you everybody for listeningto this podcast and we hope you enjoy it
and to look out for more of our outputsfrom the Sustainable Care program.
Thank you.
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