At a time when there is a nationwide shortage of hundreds of thousands of nursing staff, the story of the senior center in Katzenelnbogen, Rhineland-Palatinate, sounds at first glance too perfect to be true. To some extent she is.
Full capacity and employees recruit employees
In the senior center, 85 employees look after 95 residents, reports Die Welt. Instead of restricting the offer, the home operates at full capacity. “The retirement home family rocks,” says home manager Jonathan Ritsch.
The main reason for this is the employees from eleven countries of origin. Because the aging Federal Republic is running out of skilled workers, the home employees are recruiting colleagues in their home country. A specialist from Serbia brought her father with her as caretaker, and the deputy home manager comes from Serbia.
The home organizes accounts and apartments for the arrivals as well as school and daycare for their children. The employees help them integrate and find their way in the new country.
If the story ended here, it would remain a model example. But she doesn’t.
Bureaucracy and stumbling blocks
No matter how much effort the home family puts into integrating new members, they often have to put in unnecessary effort, reports home manager Ritsch. The authority once asked him to submit electronically transmitted documents in paper form. The officials didn’t want to print them themselves. Recognition as a skilled worker often takes years for foreign employees. Lots of emails, expensive processing fees. Everything could be much simpler.
The lengthy processes unsettle applicants. Ritsch’s Serbian deputy wanted to return to her homeland because the office did not allow her to join her family for almost two years. The authorities repeatedly make it difficult for the nursing home to find personnel for positions for which there is a lack of interested Germans.
So much for the first flaw in the showcase story.
Faster procedures and more immigration
The second stumbling block begins with the fact that Germany will lack more skilled workers in the coming years than could come from the Balkans. But – as in many professions – most foreign employees in German nursing homes come from there.
Ritsch demands that the country needs uniform and quick procedures by which trained foreigners can be recognized as skilled workers, as well as more targeted immigration into the labor market.
He has already recruited trainees from the Philippines. But he has not yet received any applications from Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers in recent years. However, the baby boomer generation will soon be retiring and will need care themselves in a few years. At that point at the latest, the Federal Republic will need even more foreign skilled workers. She needs a plan now on how to recruit them. The ingenuity of their home employees alone is probably not enough.