NUI Galway Launch Research on Migrant Care Workers
25 Sep 2009
Research by NUI Galway's Irish Centre for Social Gerontology into the failure to integrate migrant health workers appropriately into the adult care sector will be presented to Minister Aine Brady Friday 25 September.
One in three care workers employed in this sector are registered nurses and care assistants from abroad. Even with the economic downturn the proportion of migrant carers will remain high as the sector is unregulated and poorly paid, the authors believe. They interviewed a number of staff working in the sector who found difficulties with language, communication and cultural understanding on arrival, experienced discrimination , received low levels of pay and suffered due to inadequate regulation.
"These issues are intensified by the lack of funding and priority given to older adult care and, in particular, by the absence of support for migrant carers, employers and older people to cope with the cultural shift in the care workforce," Dr Walsh one of the authors of the report says.
"What we need, sooner rather than later, is a prioritisation of the older adult health and social care sector. Our older population requires greater person-centred care that acknowledges the role and potential of migrant carers to deliver such," Prof O'Shea says.
MIGRANT NURSES and care workers interviewed on a confidential basis for the NUI Galway report spoke of the rewarding aspect of their work with older people, but also acknowledged that there were serious challenges and difficulties.
A number spoke of experiencing workplace discrimination, and of a "stigma" associated with employing Africans. One Filipina nurse said the shift roster appeared to be engineered for the Irish employees, who also had more tenure.
The issue is also being investigated in Britain, North America and Canada by researchers at the University of Oxford, Georgetown University and the University of Ottawa. An international comparative report detailing some of the differences and common areas across the four countries, including Ireland, will be published this year.