Find carers and nurses in Kent

Recruiting in Kent

Recruiting care staff from the Thames to the Channel coast

Kent's size changes how you recruit. A carer in Gravesend is unlikely to want rounds near Dover, and the towns where most care employers are based, Maidstone, Dartford and Ashford, are some distance from the older coastal districts where demand is high. The steadiest hires tend to be people who already live within easy reach of the work, which on the coast often means finding someone in Deal, Hythe or Ramsgate rather than hoping a candidate will come down the M20 every morning.

Watch the Medway boundary too. If you run a service in Maidstone or Sittingbourne, good candidates may live in Chatham or Gillingham, which are under a different council but only a short drive away, and on Carer Badge they turn up in a Maidstone search as readily as someone living in the town.

Nurses are the harder hire. Three acute hospital trusts recruit across the county, so a nursing home in Thanet or Folkestone is competing with the QEQM and the William Harvey for the same people, and finding a nurse who lives nearby is often what makes a night rota work.

81% of the inspected care employers in Kent are rated Good or Outstanding by the CQC, below the 84% across the South East and below England as a whole (85%).