Timing of vaccine mandate for care home staff questioned by Norfolk County Council
They say the decision creates "a cliff-edge" and "will cause disruption"
Last updated 11th Nov 2021
Making covid vaccines mandatory for care home staff ahead of others creates a "cliff-edge" and may not have been the best decision.
That's according to James Bullion, the Executive Director of Adult Social Services at Norfolk County Council.
This comes as today marks the deadline where staff in older adult care homes have to be fully vaccinated to carry on working in the sector.
Mr Bullion says this will all affect a range of people, but insists that mitigatory plans are in place:
"For the people receiving care, its a very personal thing. A person who's supporting you, by helping you get up in the morning, helping you with your medication or going to bed. These are all very intimate acts, but they are changing and they have to due to rule changes. So its disruptive, but its also about no longer working with the person that you had been working with".
"We know where the hotspots are and we've been working with those owners. They can't enforce the rule until it becomes law as an employer. So we've got a message out to them, for them to phone us if there is a problem. Behind all of that we've got the recruitment campaign here in Norfolk, which is off the back of the national campaign to get more people working in social care".
He says the local vaccination drive has been successful, but staff will be lost:
"We have achieved a good amount of double vaccinations, something like 93%. But that still means there's around 700 being affected by this rule change. From that figures, about 350 will face not being able to work there now".
He concluded by saying that this all could have been handled a bit better:
"Vaccination is a good thing. It stops the spread of the virus and limits the potential seriousness of the illness for yourself. But creating a cliff-edge, doing it ahead of the NHS, which allows unvaccinated healthcare workers to move...I do wonder if we've got that right".