Brexit and social care in Scotland: An exploration of the perceived impact on workforce sustainability

A major challenge facing policymakers in Scotland, like most western economies, is how to sustain the workforce required to provide care and support for its ageing population. As a secondary segment of the labour market, the social care sector relies heavily on migrant labour force with a significant proportion of the workforce in Scotland being made up of nationals from EU countries. However, Brexit poses additional challenges to the sustainability of the social care workforce. For example, post-Brexit policies such as ending the ‘freedom of movement’ have some knock-on effects on the social care labour market in Scotland. This study explores the perspectives of some relevant stakeholders on how the social care workforce would be impacted by post-Brexit policy changes by employing a combination of qualitative and qualitative research techniques involving in-depth semi-structured interviews of ‘care managers’ in Scotland as well as online surveys of some EU nationals who are frontline workers in the sector. Findings from this study highlight the concerns of the stakeholders about the effects of restrictive immigration policies and inadequate funding of the social care sector on workforce sustainability considering the perennial problem of labour shortages in the sector and an increasing demand for social care.