Information for employers

There are many ways in which employers across the NHS can benefit from supporting and employing refugee healthcare professionals. This section describes these benefits and provides information and advice on how to get involved with the projects.

What are the benefits to employers?

Supporting and employing refugee healthcare professionals can deliver benefits for employers as well as the local community through:

• filling workforce gaps in a fluctuating labour market
• resourcing new ways of working by utilising the skills and experience of refugees
• supporting strategies to address health inequalities through access to a talent pool with experience, skills, knowledge and links in the local community
• increase workforce diversity by encouraging local employment from diverse communities
• refugee healthcare professionals are typically leaders in their communities and enabling their success raises aspirations and can be a highly effective way to combat social and economic exclusion
• the social and economic cost of high unemployment amongst refugee healthcare professionals is significant to both the individual refugee and their families, local communities and the UK in its international context.

How can employers get involved?

There are many ways employers can get involved in the projects NHS Employers are delivering:

• ensuring that the projects meet the current and future needs of employers through joining project boards and/or any task groups or being part of an email employer reference group to design and deliver projects
• providing placement opportunities ranging from clinical apprenticeships, clinical attachments, supervised practice to more general work placements
• contributing to the teaching programmes by providing lecturers or people to delivery sessions with refugee healthcare professionals
• providing mentors or contribute to advice and guidance sessions.

Examples of success

The London Deanery trained at least 38 refugee doctors as GPs with support from a range of other organisations now in the Building Bridges partnership.

42 refugee doctors have got jobs since Jan 07 through a training programme at Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry at Barts and the London NHS Trust. Building Bridges will expand on this work.

A number of programmes run by refugee support organisations and PCTs have enabled refugee healthcare professionals to use their skills in level 2 posts in primary care with development to level 3. For example, Tower Hamlets PCT trained 32 refugee and migrant healthcare professionals to work as healthcare assistants in primary care resulting in 30 refugees being employed by local PCTs. In a similar programme, Tower Hamlets PCT employed 8 refugee dentists as part time link workers. The refugee link workers doubled the performance of other link works and one has now started working with the trust as a general dental practitioner. The others are still completing their exams.