Making vaccination a condition of deployment in older adult care homes

The UK Department of Health and Social Care are seeking your views on a proposal make COVID-19 vaccination a condition of deployment in older adult care homes.

Older adults living in care homes have been significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic because of their heightened risk to COVID-19 infection, often with devastating consequences, as well as the risk of outbreaks in these closed settings.

Ensuring very high levels of vaccination of people living and working in these settings is an essential public health intervention.

While vaccination uptake rates are increasing slowly week on week, there are still a high number of older adult care homes which do not have the level of protection needed to reduce the risk of outbreak.

To increase vaccine take up, the government is considering amending the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

This would mean older adult care home providers could only use those staff who have received the COVID-19 vaccination (or those with a legitimate medical exemption) in line with government guidance.

The deadline for responding to the consultation is Friday 21 May 2021.

The easiest way to participate is by completing the public survey.

The consultation document is currently being translated into Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Farsi, French, Gujarati, Hindi, Kurdish, Nepali, Punjabi, Polish, Romanian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Turkish, Ukrainian and Urdu.

The survey will be made available in English (easy read) shortly.