The Department of Health and Social Care have been sharing lots of useful guidance and resources over the last few weeks in line with the ‘vaccines as a condition of deployment’ in care homes legislation.

This legislation that states from 11th November anyone working or volunteering in a care home that supports at least 1 adult over the age of 65 will need to be fully vaccinated, unless medically exempt. The grace period for anyone not vaccinated started on 22nd July, the last date for anyone to get their first dose so they are fully vaccinated by the time regulations come into force is 16th September.

The Department of Health and Social Care has worked with Skills for Care to provide additional resources, to help care home managers and providers prepare for the new regulations. Some of the resources include a social media graphic with the key policy dates, a Q&A, a vaccine communications toolkit and materials to support workforce capacity planning, recruitment, and retention.

As well as this, CQC have now published additional guidance, detailing how ‘vaccines as a condition of deployment’ regulations will be enforced. This guidance includes details around registration, ongoing monitoring and inspection, and enforcement.

And finally, DHSC held a webinar for care home managers and providers earlier today, to provide information and answer questions on the requirement for anyone working or deployed in a care home to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

For those who weren’t able to join the webinar, they outlined the key deadline dates as well as a summary of the guidance. Alison from the CQC also shared the role CQC will play when it comes to supporting providers to implement these new regulations. There were also some great questions answered specifically around what are the legitimate exemptions to the vaccine, how this will directly impact safe staffing levels and where people are able to find a record of their vaccine for proof. The recording is not yet live, however, this is going to be shared. We will link below where to find this once it becomes live, so keep an eye out there for updates!

With there being only 4 weeks before staff who work in health and social care have to have had their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to ensure they can meet the deadline of being fully vaccinated by 11th November, we would recommend you sharing these resources with your teams so they are able to update you quickly once they’ve been vaccinated to meet the upcoming deadlines.

Click here to access all the resources outlined above!

If you would like any more information on the above, have any questions, or about how we can collaborate, please let us know. To get in touch, either call 03305 552233 or email [email protected].

As a specialist, family-run recruitment business, we provide a proactive and consultative approach to recruitment in Social Care. We help organisations to target issues such as continuity of staffing, reducing spend where you have a high volume of agency usage and supporting those who have specific talent requirements or are in hard to fill locations. We can help with any immediate staffing requirements or longer-term recruitment projects to ultimately save you time and money on agency spend.

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