April 2026 – Liis Revell, L’Arche Kent Community Leader

During the Covid pandemic, there were unprecedented workforce shortages in adult social care. The government responded by extending the Health and Care (HCW) visa to our sector, promising those who came that they would qualify for Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK after five years. Now the government is threatening to break that promise. We invited our local MP, Rosie Duffield, to find out more and support us in raising concerns.

When the government published A Fairer Pathway to Settlement, proposing to change how immigrants earn settlement in this country, we wrote to our local MP Rosie Duffield to voice our concerns. Rosie was keen to learn more about the impact on L’Arche, meet some of the people who would be affected, and see how she could help. So we invited her to visit our L'Arche Kent Community.

The proposed changes would be hard to bear personally - and make future planning for L'Arche extraordinarily difficult.

On 17 April, Rosie visited our Activities and Office Space at St Radigund’s, in Canterbury town centre. She was welcomed by Mark, Kathy, Witek, Ikarika, Chris, Andrew, Tosin, Jasmine and me – a group that included people with and without learning disabilities, managers as well as assistants who are on the HCW visa.

Assistants told Rosie how the promise of indefinite leave to remain had shaped their decision to come here in the first place. They were looking for a secure place to live and work, a place to settle. It was a promise that had shaped their whole lives and the lives of their families. The proposal to go back on the promise, by extending the qualifying period to 10 or even 15 years, did not just represent a delay for them. It introduced a fundamental uncertainty about their status and future in the country, which could close the door to them here entirely. 

We also explained to Rosie how the new proposals would affect others in L’Arche, above all our members with learning disabilities. People with learning disabilities often face significant change in their lives. The relationships they build with support workers are not just incidental, they are essential. When support workers choose to leave, the impact is real and lasting. So if others are hoping to stay, it feels absurd to create a set of rules that would make it impossible for them to do so.

Kathy showed Rosie our Community’s 50^th anniversary book, with page after page pointing to relationships that have been sustained and nurtured over decades. These are the kind of relationships the new proposals would break apart.

Finally, we explained to Rosie what the impact for L’Arche could be. After the Health Care Worker visa was extended to adult social care, L’Arche recruited around 150 new support assistants across the UK. Here in Kent today, over half of all our direct support staff are on this visa. If they are forced to leave by the new earned settlement framework, we will need to find new assistants to replace them - in a context where few local people are interested in care work. To be clear, unless the government improves pay and conditions in social care, and introduces a new workforce plan, closing the door to international recruitment won’t create more jobs at home – it will just leave people without care.   

We loved having Rosie come to visit us. Before she left, Witek showed her our events programme and invited her to come back to see us. We are grateful for how she listened, for promising to take action by raising our concerns with the relevant Ministers – and to promote our exciting project to redevelop the Glebe!

This conversation continues – and it matters.