"UK care agencies accused of exploiting foreign workers caught in debt traps,"

British social care agencies have been accused of exploiting foreign workers, leaving people living on the breadline as they struggle to pay off debts run up while trying to secure jobs that fail to materialise.

Dozens of people working for 11 different care providers have told the Guardian they paid thousands of pounds to agents to secure jobs working in UK care homes or residential care, with most finding limited or no employment when they arrived.

Man are now struggling to pay off huge debts in their home countries and having to work in irregular jobs for below the minimum wage...

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has now written to the leaders of all three major national parties to demand a full government inquiry into treatment of migrant care workers when parliament returns.

Prof Nicola Ranger, the acting general secretary of the RCN, said: “The exploitation of migrant care workers is a national scandal but little has been done to tackle it.

“A chronically understaffed social care sector has supercharged its recruitment of staff from overseas and a lack of regulation and enforcement has allowed some employers to profit from the mistreatment of migrants.”...

David Neal, who raised the alarm about the care visa system when he was the government’s borders inspector, said: “As soon as we looked at social care visas, we realised there was exploitation going on.”...

The Guardian spoke to more than 30 workers, all of whom came from India – though they said others from sub-Saharan Africa had suffered similar experiences.

All shared roughly the same story, of paying immigration agents – and in some cases, the care provider itself – several thousand pounds in fees to secure a visa to work either in a care home or as a carer in people’s homes...