Mandatory Vaccination – comment from Care England
Care England, the largest and most diverse representative body for independent providers of adult social care, has criticised the Government for its handling of mandatory vaccination in health and social care.
Professor Martin Green OBE, Chief Executive of Care England, says:
“This policy was imposed upon the care home sector without due consideration or support. Sadly, it has had unintended consequences with staff leaving the sector, some to the NHS, thus exacerbating the pre existing recruitment and retention challenges leading to disruption to the delivery of health and care services”.
This afternoon, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Rt Hon Sajid Javid, announced consultation to revoke the legislation to make mandatory vaccination a condition of deployment for the NHS, wider social care staff and care home staff.
Martin Green continues:
“In our response to the consultation to the second tranche of making vaccination a condition of deployment in the health and wider social care sector, Care England appealed for lessons to be learned from the legislation process around regulations for care home staff. These were not taken on board. Care homes have been the scapegoat and whilst the Government claims that health and social care are the same system it is clear that they are operating under different standards; once again social care is the poor relation”.