Telegraph is reporting vaccine to be compulsory for care home workers

[bathsh3ba]

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/03/22/care-home-staff-face-compulsory-covid-vaccination/

I feel quite uncomfortable with the idea of making any vaccine compulsory....

Thoughts?

Well i suggested this on a thread last night, that it should be a choice. Got absolutely shrieked at by posters, sworn at several times, called thick and naïve and and the thread got deleted. Called a conspiracy theorist too.
What sort of place is it when we can't express opinions.

@BelleHathor

How will the vulnerable be protected when a lot of staff leave and care homes are short staffed even more than usual 🤔 The only people to benefit will be Lawyers. There will be legal challenges as there should be as this is a violation of bodily autonomy.

I wouldn't worry about staff shortages. There are enough unemployed available to fill vacancies and 'everyone knows' that the only skill you need to be a carer is the ability to wipe someone's arse. If the unemployed don't actually want to be carer's, they can be forced in to the job with the use of benefit sanctions. Clearly, people would rather have their vulnerable relatives 'cared' for by a vaccinated person who hates the job than an unvaccinated person who does actually care. Instances of cruelty and neglect are already horrific in care homes but hey-ho - at least it isn't Covid.

I don't think that people will be leaving in droves, and if they do I think they were in the wrong job anyway. If my elderly immune compromised mother was in care I'd be furious that someone would be prepared to put her at risk for the sake of a simple jab. Even working in the water industry requires vaccination, it isn't as unusual as is being made out.

I was like a pin cushion with the amount of vaccines and antibody tests I had to have at the start of my nurse training as my parents hadn't bothered with vaccines, not anti vaccine, just didn't bother.

This is just one more to add to the list.

My great aunt is in a care home where they have decided it will be a compulsory requisite of employment there, it will also be compulsory for residents unless they medically can't have it and in the future for visitors too. The manager was telling me the other day that she is getting calls from nurses and support workers looking for jobs as they want the security of the vaccine policy when it can be fully in place. This isn't in the UK.

At least where I work we all have had our 1st vaccine, we due our 2nd in the next few weeks.

Why would a care worker leave their job rather than get a vaccination that helps protect the people they care for?

This.

At the moment it's possible to require staff to have vaccinations as a condition of employment, and there are clauses in existing contracts (relating to health and safety) that might allow you to require existing staff to be vaccinated, though this is untested in court as yet. Care home providers are anxious about the whole thing and nobody wants to be the one hitting the headlines with court cases. I think they're welcome the government giving them clear guidelines in this area.

Personally it's hard to see how someone's right to avoid the jab and keep their job should override someone else's right to be kept safe from Covid in their home. Would seem perfectly sensible to require personal visitors to be vaccinated too - they can stay away if not, just like everyone's been forced to do over the last year.

I don't see the problem with making vaccines compulsory, in Australia they are compulsory for school, in a number of countries they are compulsory to be able to visit. People make it sound like we're turning into North Korea, nope we're just trying to keep the elderly and vulnerable safe. Working in care is a choice at the end of the day so nobody is being forced into anything. The only slippery slope is a slippery slope into keeping people safer.

To all those waffling about civil liberties......
Do you really want your elderly, frail and vulnerable gran/grandad/mum/dad being cared for, by people who could easily pass on a disease, which will possibly cause your family member a lonely horrible death ? (and is easily avoided)

I cannot see how any normal person would want that, so please explain why you would...

I wouldn't worry about staff shortages. There are enough unemployed available to fill vacancies and 'everyone knows' that the only skill you need to be a carer is the ability to wipe someone's arse. If the unemployed don't actually want to be carer's, they can be forced in to the job with the use of benefit sanctions. Clearly, people would rather have their vulnerable relatives 'cared' for by a vaccinated person who hates the job than an unvaccinated person who does actually care. Instances of cruelty and neglect are already horrific in care homes but hey-ho - at least it isn't Covid.
👏 👏 👏 And all for the lovely average salary of £8.71ph

The short sightedness is astounding. Outcomes are better for residents who are treated with love and compassion by employees who actually care. Where people are working under duress or treat residents as an inconvenience the residents have worsening outcomes.

I do t think it's an issue to say you have to have the vaccine as a condition of employment. As pp have said, that's already the case with Hep B for some medical professionals.

I had to have Hep A and B before I started in forensics - no jab, no job.

And surely people's fears of a new vaccine don't override the elderly and vulnerable peoples right to be safe? It's not as if they can get up and leave is it?

Considering some on MN thought that people were 'killing grannies' because they had two walks per day rather than one, I'm surprised about the stance taken re vaccines.

In the comments on the Telegraph article various people were saying they work in health care and vaccines are not compulsory. What is the legislation that makes it compulsory and for what jobs?

It depends on the duties, so I didn't have Hep B at the start of my career because I only did non invasive work. When I moved to somewhere with invasive work and therefore the possibility of being in contact with blood I had to have HepB.

I'm not sure which are compulsory now. There was a child who died from chicken pox as a complication of a heart transplant so I would not be surprised if cpox wasn't compulsory now.

If you are working with people who cannot be vaccinated or for whom an illness will be severe and life threatening then vaccination is about protecting that person, just as wearing PPE is.

I just don’t get any care/social/medical staff don’t believe in a science based approach like a vaccine - so weird

I taught at an international college most of the students worked in social care, some, and I stress some, students believed in things that were decidedly not scientific eg if you insulted the then president of Malawi he will send a swarm of bees to kill you.

He also did not need a coat hook, he just hung his jacket in mid air.

There might be a few care home workers who'll leave their jobs rather than be vaccinated, but I doubt it'll be that many. There might be others who'll leave their jobs if they're forced to work alongside unvaccinated colleagues and have to deal with all the horrible fallout on the people they care for.

Care workers are poorly paid, but it is also true that it's a job that doesn't require much in terms of qualifications, so it is possible to recruit new workers into the sector with relative ease.

There might be others who'll leave their jobs if they're forced to work alongside unvaccinated colleagues

The vaccine that we're told prevents spread? Shouldn't be a problem then right?

@Lockheart

There are already mandatory vaccinations for certain jobs, and for entry to certain countries. With good reason. I can't get het up about one more.

This.

Nobody is required to work in health/ care; and nobody is required to travel abroad. If these are things that you want to do, then there are already requirements in place. One more is just that - one more.

Forcing people to have a vaccination is wrong. That I am on board with. Any vaccination. And many people who are refusing the vaccine, although not all, are saying that it is fine because the chance of them becoming seriously sick or dying is very low. That is true. But the chance of them transmitting it isn't, and we are talking about people who, even with PPE etc., are working in close proximity to people with known and specific vulnerabilities for lengthy periods of time. That is not taking the risk on themselves, that is forcing the risk on others.

Conflating that issue with the bad pay and bad conditions for care workers is a red herring. They should be treated better. But that has absolutely nothing at all to do with whether they should be required to have vaccinations which safeguard others, even if they don't care about protecting themselves.

@MaxNormal

There might be others who'll leave their jobs if they're forced to work alongside unvaccinated colleagues

The vaccine that we're told prevents spread? Shouldn't be a problem then right?

For the umpteenth time, nobody has ever said that the vaccine prevents spread. You do love peddling this bullshit from thread to thread, don't you? The science says that it reduces transmission, evidence says that is true. Nobody has said that it prevents spread. If you are being told that it prevents spread by somebody, then you need to stop reading facebook and try some real sources of information.

Why would a care worker leave their job rather than get a vaccination that helps protect the people they care for?

Exactly. Those saying care home workers shouldn’t have to have the vaccine don’t care about the elderly people who live in these homes.

I've had a couple of jobs now where vaccination was part of the contract due to travel to Africa or Asia. I don't see it as a problem. It was for my safety as much as everyone else's.

As for those worried about vaccines being untested, By the time the ruling comes in and is applied to existing carers, 100 million people will have been vaccinated. At what point will people accept something as safe?

To all those waffling about civil liberties...... Do you really want your elderly, frail and vulnerable gran/grandad/mum/dad being cared for, by people who could easily pass on a disease, which will possibly cause your family member a lonely horrible death ? (and is easily avoided)

Precisely, Dragongirl.

If it is a condition of employmemt, then it isn't compulsory. People do have a choice. It may not be options they like, but it is still a choice.

Wage and issues related to females working in lower paid roles are seperate issues that need tacking, but let's not confuse them to prove a point.

I had a condition attached to my role, if I refused, I couldn't do it.

@Moondust001 please quote another example of where I've spread "bullshit" please.
I have never said anything anti vax, I've only ever raised concerns about it becoming de facto mandatory.

Perhaps you should read up a bit more, current evidence suggests that, for example AZ, is around 70% successful at preventing spread and 100% successful at preventing hospitalisation.

If however as you say it doesn't prevent spread then insisting on vaccinated carers won't prevent spread to the elderly anyway.

I wasn't permitted to work on a postnatal ward until I'd received the MMR jab (too old to have had it as a child) and the hepatitis vaccine. When you're working with those with an undeveloped immune system you need to take steps to protect them.

I could have chosen not to have the vaccines and do a different job. This is standard and has been for years.

I work in a care home, we haven't had one outbreak! I have declined it on the grounds I am of child bearing age and trying to conceive ect, this is not a good enough of a reason not to have it accourding to my manager, my job us under threat and I am being treated as a outcast. I know I have a duty of care ect but our home for the last 12 month hasn't had one case, staff or residents. Surely I should be able to chose what goes into my body? Obviously not. It's a terrible feeling to be pushed into somthing i don't want.

@peardrops1

It's not a compulsory vaccination, it's a vaccination as a condition of employment. Which seems entirely reasonable to me.

For a job that generally only those at the bottom of society ever apply for, mostly out of a lack of any other choice.

So many sickening quotes from middle class posters who this kind of thing will never apply to but who are happy to force it onto those down at the bottom of the ladder, whilst disingenuously lying to both themselves and the rest of us by pretending that it's a 'choice' and that if someone doesn't like it they can go and get another job (as if most wouldn't have done that already if they had any ability to).

As for those saying that those working in care shouldn't be doing it if they don't 'care' - you care yourselves for those elderly relatives that you prefer to stick in homes, outsourcing the 'caring' to some exploited minimum wage worker with no alternatives (and then complaining about it when it turns out the care isn't very good, as if that will somehow salve your consciences).

Saying that people who work in care should be only motivated by altruistic purposes is awful and yes it is a feminist issue.

Cleaning a body is not worth less than cleaning a car. Wiping a face is not worth less than wiping a glass screen.

Yet we have it drummed into us that as women we should do these things for love just as we do for our own babies, and it’s wrong.