Last week, I asked members of the Social Care community to partake in a poll, surrounding the new vaccination legislation and their stance and thoughts on this. The results showed that:

• 58% of participants said that they are looking to starting to recruit those who are unvaccinated
• Whilst 42% of participants stated they would like to keep full vaccination status.

Here are some of the comments from participants and their thoughts on this:

Robin Sidebottom, Healthcare CEO stated:
“My preference would be to have a fully vaccinated workforce only, but I fear that there would be legal issues if we don’t take people who are not vaccinated, therefore it’s with regret, but only on the basis that I want to avoid possible litigation in the future”

Andrew Brindley, CEO of AJ Recruitment said:
“I think there will be a test case, and they will point to the NHS because they haven’t made this compulsory and they are treating the most vulnerable in society. There are circa 120,000 unvaccinated staff working for the NHS. It’s a hard conundrum that I feel will rumble on for quite some time.”

Matt Knibbs MBA FCIPD, former Head of People & Culture, stated:
“In my opinion, there are other factors that also need to be considered, not just the litigation risk: H&S policies, risk assessments, operational procedures, and much of the communication would have centered on protecting people. Scientific advice remains that the vaccine is the most effective way to do this. Although the Government cited it was no longer proportionate to the risk based on updated medical opinion, if providers don’t ensure a continuous and effective dialogue with all, including the majority of vaccinated staff, I think the greater risk could be division amongst colleagues, clients and family members. And surely that can’t be good for delivery of broader care outcomes.

As a follow-up from this, The Department of Health and Social Care publish monthly official statistics on adult social care in England. This publication provides an overview on a range of information on social care settings, with a focus on the impact of COVID-19, and more specifically Vaccinations.

Summary of vaccination status amongst staff in the health and social care sector – COVID-19 vaccinations in staff working in domiciliary care, younger adult care homes and other settings

The following proportions of social care staff have been reported to have received their COVID-19 vaccination doses:
In younger adult care homes:

• 94.6% of staff have been reported to have received 2 doses
• 48.3% of staff have been reported to have received their booster dose

  For domiciliary care staff:

• 84.4% of staff have been reported to have received 2 doses
• 42.6% of staff have been reported to have received their booster dose

  Among staff working in other settings:

• 34.6% of staff have been reported to have received 2 doses
• 4.7% of staff have been reported to have received their booster dose

COVID-19 vaccination in social care settings

As of the end of February 2022, the proportions who had received a booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine were:

• 51.8% of total staff of older adult care homes
• 48.3% of total staff of younger adult care homes and 42.6% of total domiciliary care staff

If you would like to discuss the above, or about how we can collaborate, please let us know. To get in touch, email [email protected] or call us on 03305 552233.

As a specialist, family-run recruitment business, we provide a proactive and consultative approach to recruitment within 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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