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?

I am totally against compulsory vaccination or vaccine passports, but if you work in care, you need to be vaccinated. Not only to protect the people you are looking after, but so you don't get ill as often and need time off.

If you don't want a vaccination, work in a different field.

Ideally everyone should be socially responsible enough to get vaccinated.

Otherwise it should be mandatory for anyone able to have it and who wants to be in a public space.

Anyone visiting a care home should therefore also have to be vaccinated, including all of those making their guilt trips to visit the relatives they have shoved in a home and (mostly) forgotten.

Or will they refuse when it's their body, rather than some minimum wage worker, and use it as an excuse to avoid doing even that?

Also, still some people telling carers that if they don't like it they should get another job, as if it's really that easy - I'd love to tell you what I really think of you, but don't want to get banned. Suffice to say, you are the real problem in our society.

I think there is a difference between an employment condition and a LAW. It doesn't sound as if HCP vaccination is governed by a law, so why are they coming down in so much more of a heavy-handed way on care staff?

If an individual employer requires vaccination, that's a business decision and I respect that. If all employers require it, that's bad luck for those who don't want it. If a LAW requires it, to me that is overkill and the government over-reaching itself.

Anyone visiting a care home should therefore also have to be vaccinated

THIS

Even with all residents vaccinated, an infected person visiting a typical care home is likely to result in at least one death. Indeed there'd be arguments that any care home that allowed unvaccinated people to enter was guilty of gross negligence manslaughter.

@bathsh3ba

I think there is a difference between an employment condition and a LAW. It doesn't sound as if HCP vaccination is governed by a law, so why are they coming down in so much more of a heavy-handed way on care staff?

If an individual employer requires vaccination, that's a business decision and I respect that. If all employers require it, that's bad luck for those who don't want it. If a LAW requires it, to me that is overkill and the government over-reaching itself.

Why? Because they can.

They talk about protecting the most vulnerable in society, but only when it comes to health. Shitting all over the most socially or financially vulnerable is perfectly fine.

It doesn't sound as if HCP vaccination is governed by a law, so why are they coming down in so much more of a heavy-handed way on care staff?

Because they can, we have no voice, no one regards us as anything other than arse wipers and tea makers, we're easy to bully.
To make the government look better after the almighty fuck up last year.
Because care assistants are the easy targets here, they get the blame for things that companies, policies and government do to ensure that they can't deliver good quality care.
And if we start asking questions or having objections, then we can be shouted at because we don't care and everyone trots off to their own lives feeling like we've been put in our place again.

The only people treated worse than us in this situation are the residents who end up with bargain price care because people don't want to invest in the people looking after them.

Anyone visiting a care home should therefore also have to be vaccinated

All care home staff are eligible for vaccination, but not all potential visitors. So the measures in place are different (negative LFT, limits on contact, possibly outdoors only, limits on numbers and duration) to those who need prolonged contact to deliver care, are indoors and who are seeing multiple residents every day

In the industry, most providers are taking a pragmatic approach at the moment - mandating vaccinations for agency and bank staff for example, or making it a a pre employment condition for new recruits. None have so far tried to enforce it on substantive staff working under agreed existing terms and conditions.

But in community care there is already huge pressure on dom care providers from families to only supply vaccinated home care workers and I suspect that the NHS will soon require new staff or agency temps to have it in line with Hep B and TB occy health requirements

@bathsh3ba

I think there is a difference between an employment condition and a LAW. It doesn't sound as if HCP vaccination is governed by a law, so why are they coming down in so much more of a heavy-handed way on care staff?

If an individual employer requires vaccination, that's a business decision and I respect that. If all employers require it, that's bad luck for those who don't want it. If a LAW requires it, to me that is overkill and the government over-reaching itself.

Because of the amount of outbreaks in care homes and vulnerable people who died. Obviously. As said, a large percentage of those outbreaks will have come from staff infecting the residents. The stats speak for themselves. If you can’t trust the care home to adequately protect the residents then the government needs to step in and do what’s required instead.

Where was Matt Hancock's touching concern for residents when covid positive patients were being discharged into care-homes?

Because of the amount of outbreaks in care homes and vulnerable people who died. Obviously. As said, a large percentage of those outbreaks will have come from staff infecting the residents. The stats speak for themselves. If you can’t trust the care home to adequately protect the residents then the government needs to step in and do what’s required instead.

The same government that shipped patients out of hospital and into care homes without testing at the start of this?
If that was the case then the government shouldn't have done that should they? They should have told care workers to isolate, made sure anyone in the family did, paid for that, paid for private transport to work and back, ensured guaranteed shopping delivery slots available to care workers, introduced testing faster, made sure track and trace worked effectively, funded 1:1 placements for patients who don't understand and therefore wander/touch things so they could be more closely monitored. Or perhaps the fee payers would have been happy to fund that?

Nah, much better to say that the care workers are actually the problem and blame them.

@Maverickess

Because of the amount of outbreaks in care homes and vulnerable people who died. Obviously. As said, a large percentage of those outbreaks will have come from staff infecting the residents. The stats speak for themselves. If you can’t trust the care home to adequately protect the residents then the government needs to step in and do what’s required instead.

The same government that shipped patients out of hospital and into care homes without testing at the start of this?
If that was the case then the government shouldn't have done that should they? They should have told care workers to isolate, made sure anyone in the family did, paid for that, paid for private transport to work and back, ensured guaranteed shopping delivery slots available to care workers, introduced testing faster, made sure track and trace worked effectively, funded 1:1 placements for patients who don't understand and therefore wander/touch things so they could be more closely monitored. Or perhaps the fee payers would have been happy to fund that?

Nah, much better to say that the care workers are actually the problem and blame them.

I don’t disagree that there were other causes. But it is also very very clear a huge amount of the infections must have come from staff. No one Is denying hospitals were not also a cause in some instances. That’s a given.

But pretending it was all hospitals is just silliness. Clearly staff were infecting patients. Likely because a large number didn’t even know they had it. Or some suspected but still needed to work as they needed the money.

Just because there were hospital issues in the way it was handled doesn’t mean we should ignore other major causes. The residents need protecting. So it needs to be a multi focused approach. Covering hospitals, staff and visitors.

@salmonskinjerky

Where was Matt Hancock's touching concern for residents when covid positive patients were being discharged into care-homes?

Well clearly because Matt Hancock is incapable of wiping his own arse, we should simply kill off everyone in care homes.

Perhaps they should give us care workers decent ppe and not some masks and pinnys you can buy in a supermarket. And yes I have had my vaccine

@Bluntness100
I'm not pretending it's only hospitals, hence the list of things that could have been implemented by the government to keep care workers risk, and therefore residents risk, as low as possible. They didn't.

Yes, infections also came from staff because they had to have children in school so they could work, they had to go shopping, a number have to travel by public transport, Care workers generally don't get paid more than ssp for being off sick, that cuts my monthly income in half, means I could lose my home and not pay things like council tax. It took 6 months to implement your first positive test and resulting isolation to be paid at full pay, get it again? Tough shit. Have symptoms but test negative? Off you go to work anyway, or your 'duty to keep your residents safe' can cost you your home, that doesn't mattter, you don't get paid for just in case.
So pretending that the government are stepping in with enforcement of vaccines in care workers are being some big hero and saving our elderly and vulnerable from care workers who refuse to get the vaccine is silliness, it is going to cost no more than providing the vaccines would have anyway and is a convenient way of blaming someone else.

[quote Maverickess]@Bluntness100
I'm not pretending it's only hospitals, hence the list of things that could have been implemented by the government to keep care workers risk, and therefore residents risk, as low as possible. They didn't.

Yes, infections also came from staff because they had to have children in school so they could work, they had to go shopping, a number have to travel by public transport, Care workers generally don't get paid more than ssp for being off sick, that cuts my monthly income in half, means I could lose my home and not pay things like council tax. It took 6 months to implement your first positive test and resulting isolation to be paid at full pay, get it again? Tough shit. Have symptoms but test negative? Off you go to work anyway, or your 'duty to keep your residents safe' can cost you your home, that doesn't mattter, you don't get paid for just in case.
So pretending that the government are stepping in with enforcement of vaccines in care workers are being some big hero and saving our elderly and vulnerable from care workers who refuse to get the vaccine is silliness, it is going to cost no more than providing the vaccines would have anyway and is a convenient way of blaming someone else.[/quote]
Honestly. I’ve read your post twice and I genuinely have no clue what you’re arguing about or even why.

Incidentally, uptake of the vaccine was 88% in my area from care workers, those figures didn't account for the workers who can't be vaccinated for health reasons, or those (like 2 of my colleagues ) who were unable to receive the vaccine because they were 4 weeks since a positive test, and vaccinated at a later date.
Guess what some chose to see it As though? 12% of care workers refuse. It's a bloody set-up and as usual some people are jumping right on the bandwagon.

Aren’t there already something like 40,000 unfilled care jobs?

What about pregnant care workers being forced to have the vaccination?

@notrub

I'm pointing out that Matt Hancocks morally charged language about "duty of care" is disingenuous at best considering the spectacular carelessness of government policy surrounding residential care that has undoubtedly contributed to many, many deaths.

I don't agree with the proposal but can see it from both sides, the staff in care homes also need to be protected. It is interesting that yet again the care home sector is at the forefront of policy - what about other settings? I don't hold the view that the care homes should be top priority - I think getting children and teenagers back to normal life is the priority, I think vaccinating teachers would have been a better course of action. As for the argument of personal liberty I feel that is already being eroded

Fine as long as they make it compulsory for frontlinebnhs workers too. I’m a bit fed up of the government treating care workers like shit and getting away with it just because on the whole they tend to be BAME, female, and low paid.

Severe covid amongst younger ppl is most likely caught in hospitals. Make it compulsory for the nhs first

[quote salmonskinjerky]@notrub

I'm pointing out that Matt Hancocks morally charged language about "duty of care" is disingenuous at best considering the spectacular carelessness of government policy surrounding residential care that has undoubtedly contributed to many, many deaths.[/quote]
You're arguing that because Matt Hancock screwed up (along with many others in government), that means that any effort NOT to screw up in future is wrong. You are claiming that he MUST continue to screw up presumably forever, because HOW DARE HE suddenly wise up.

It's a rather strange argument - each to their own I guess.

@notrub

I didn't say any of that, or imply it. Read my comments again more carefully if you need to.