Mandatory vaccinations to access nursery and school?

[rickyrickygrimes]

I’m British but have lived in France since my youngest was 5 months old. Both my children had to have a full programme of vaccinations (I think it’s 11 in total) before starting nursery / school. I’m surprised to find out that there aren’t any mandatory vaccinations for children going into a group setting here in the UK and wondered how that would go down if it was required? Especially now that there seen to be rising numbers of children are not being vaccinated against serious illnesses such as measles.

I think surely more effective to tie to child benefit. It’s a relatively large amount of money so it’s a high incentive for those who aren’t bothered, aren’t sure or are ambivalent about vaccines to do it.

However as long as child element of UC or equivalent remains in place then it’s not excessively punitive.

You’d have to be a committed anti vaxxer to decide to forgo child benefit, to (in your view) protect your child from the dangers of vaccines.

Id be concerned that the large group of non vaccinating parents who fall into the ambivalent or not bothered would equally just drift into not sending children to school and I don’t think a non choice to home educate is in children’s best interests.

Perhaps we could move to annual fines for parents whose children aren't up to date with their vaccinations.

You're saying 'own choices' when talking about punishing children for choices they very much did not make.

Absolutely, not feeling/showing pain/discomfort, unable to seek/ask for help. I can see reasons why autistic people were included but I felt my son wouldn’t be impacted in those ways.

Yes but when a child is punished for choices other parents have made (a child who cannot be vaccinated being punished for the choices anti vaxxers have made) there is no way to put pressure on the people with the power to do something about it, because it's not their child who is affected.

If they see their own families negatively affected by their selfish choice not to vaccinate, they might do better.

Perhaps being up to date with vaccinations could be a condition to the issuing of a passport. No foreign holidays for families who don't vaccinate their kids.

We could have a law that says that children over 11 can make their own choice about whether to be vaccinated and don't need parental consent, so that when they're old enough to have the opportunity to go on school trips abroad, they can take matters into their own hands if they don't want to miss out.

This wouldn’t prevent unvaccinated children being in group childcare / education settings though.

No but it would be a pretty big stick. I also think schools should have a record of which children are not vaccinated because their parents are stupid and selfish, and which children can't be vaccinated, and not put the former in the same class as the latter.

It doesn’t take much of a drop in uptake rates for diseases like measles to make a comeback as we have already seen in parts of the US and the UK. Children have died unnecessarily in both countries and it is usually the medically vulnerable most affected by the choices of other parents not to vaccinate. Vaccine rates have to be high to achieve herd immunity as it is very contagious.

I was going to suggest this. Child benefit gets cut if child isn't kept up to date with vaccines without a documented medical reason. Or the annual fine idea @MissScarletInTheBallroom suggested.

Meanwhile, any unvaccinated children in childcare and schools should be barred during outbreaks to lessen the spread.

I agree, and think there should be education if people aren't vaccinating their children. But I don't think it should be forced

It would push more people to Reform, so I don't think it will come in.

I'm in favour of vaccinations and have always got them and am really concerned that we don't meet herd immunity on some. I do think it's a really tricky balancing of rights, though. I'm not at all keen on forcing medical treatment on people. I think bodily autonomy is a really important principle to protect.

I have wondered about the possibility in having some schools only accept children with vaccinations (or a genuine medical reason) so that those whose parents get them vaccinated can better reap the benefits of their civic actions (and the children that rely on herd immunity because of genuine medical issues can get that herd immunity). There could be still be state schools for children whose parents won't vaccinate them, they just don't get to as much benefit from everyone else's vaccinations while lowering the effectiveness.

They are extremely selfish, and judgemental as in "how could you poison your baby with mercury" when you give your child perfectly tried and tested vaccines, and can be dangerous because they influence other parents.

Yet when measles hits their neighbourhood all their resolute faith in their precious, unblemished child's immune system being all the child needs and a bit of burning sage waving seems to maybe not be quite as adequate as once they were so convinced.

And seem confused that the first jab doesn't give you full immunity, so kind of indicating that they don't know as much about vaccines as they thought they did.

I wouldn't trust the French government one little bit. Have a look into the Macrons and you'll see why.

This is what happens in Australia. If kids aren’t vaccinated as per the schedule they don’t receive the family allowance. When they brought that in (a few years before Covid and all the conspiracy theories) it did increase vaccination rates as most people whose kids weren’t vaccinated was because they hadn’t got around to it. I did know an anti vaxxer family who got their kids vaccinated to get the family allowance though (very grudgingly). One of the kids was already autistic so they couldn’t blame the vaccine on that!

Also I believe unvaccinated children are sent home from childcare in outbreaks to slow the spread, which is sensible.

When that medical decision endangers other people, absolutely I do.

Sensible Australians! It certainly would increase rates for those that are just a bit disorganised so haven't got it done and those that are ideologically opposed will have to think long and hard how attached they are to their beliefs.

Your choice of words is undermining your argument. If you refer to people as selfish and stupid because they have a different opinion to you, you've lost the moral high ground, whatever your stance.

Not condoning name calling, but criticism isn’t about others’ opinions but for their actions, that affect others

We had similar experience in the state of New York. We had to fill in a form for the kindergarten detailing DCs vaccinations and answering various questions. These were private nurseries but were subject to state regulations. DS hadn't had chicken pox and we were told he'd have the vaccination. This was many years ago and I'd never heard of it as a possible vaccination in the UK, so he had it in the US. We also had US flu jabs as carers and children needed to have those.

Not all opinions are equal.

My opinion about vaccinations is supported by medical science and, more importantly, hasn't killed anyone.

Has anyone on this thread ever met or know anyone with permanent brain damage from vaccines?

You don’t understand human rights. French people can choose not to have the vaccines. They won’t be incarcerated if they don’t.

I didn't know that I think it's a great idea, we paid for DS to be vaccinated against chicken pox. People say it's only mild but my niece was hospitalised with it

Definitely should be mandatory, absent a genuine and properly diagnosed reason, as a pp said.

I’d introduce a new law of public endangerment by negligence and fine or imprison anti-vax parents who can’t produce a genuine reason not to vaccinate their children. Anti-vaxxers wouldn’t be forced to vaccinate; they’d just have to pay the price of their dangerous foolishness.

I’m not in UK or France, but we have a good system. It’s termed ‘No jab, No pay’. So, childhood vaccinations are not compulsory, as that would infringe human rights, blah blah, BUT should you choose not to, you won’t be able to get any assistance payments relevant to your kids such as equivalent of nursery, hospital universal credit payments etc. It’s just a pity you need to do this to get people to do the right thing by their kids.