Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to take steps to increase the levels of English language proficiency required to provide social care services.

Care providers have a responsibility to ensure their chosen candidates have the right skills to work in care. As part of this, they should assess a candidate’s English language proficiency at the interview stage of the recruitment process. This applies to both candidates from overseas who they will be offering sponsorship to, and candidates already in the UK, if English is not their first language.

For staff who are recruited from overseas, English language proficiency requirements are set by the Home Office, as a condition to qualifying for a Skilled worker visa, including care workers and senior care workers on the Health and Care Worker visa. Individuals from overseas must be able to prove they can speak, read, write and understand English to at least level B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) scale. The framework can be found at the following link:

https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/table-1-cefr-3.3-common-reference-levels-global-scale