Why is vaccine uptake so low for care workers?

[Hamilbamil]

1/6th of workers haven't had it despite it being available and being urged to for months! We're at just under 80% take up for the country at large with most under 30s either still waiting or not even able to book yet for the youngest groups. It seems likely that we'll get to 90% without breaking much of a sweat!

I'm puzzled by this apparent correlation between being a care home worker and being anti-vacs. It seems totally bizarre, but there must be a reason.

A lot of attitudes on this thread make me sick.

How do any of you know what education any of the staff have. You lot are insulting b*stards.

@Tootsey11

I work as a carer myself. A lot of my colleagues have a complete lack of education. That’s not an insult, that’s a fact. Yes, it doesn’t particularly sound very nice but a lot of the time it is true. If that makes you uncomfortable then you are denying reality which will get you nowhere. Particularly when it comes to solving problems within the sector. You need to listen to people actually working within the sector. So many people have idealised views of care homes and presume all staff are there for altruistic reasons, which is incredibly naive. The problems stem from the top down and I am in no way pointing fingers at care workers who work damn hard in long and tiresome conditions. Many of my colleagues regularly do 15 hour shifts, it’s bloody slave labour.

There are systemic problems in the whole industry, and staffing levels are dangerously low.

Social care reform is what is truly needed to make a difference in people’s lives but that’s a pipe dream.

The OP asked why some care workers do not want the vaccine. I simply listed some reasons. I hear them everyday.

@Tootsey11 couldn't agree more!

Where I work only 4 out of the 12 of us took up the vaccines back in December/Jan.

We are a mixed team of black British and white British. Only one of the black staff will have the vaccine - despite one of the teams brother dying of Covid. We are all 50+, well educated professionals (social workers).

The team have all said its because its mistrust of the government/medical professionals.

People with low levels of education and low salaries are less likely to get jabbed. Care work is very undervalued and underpaid. Most care companies are desperate for staff, no formal education required.

Not being judgemental. I worked for a care agency and have family who are carers. Its a simple fact.

@Jabbinell

My manager requires a clean DBS and a pulse. We have one lady in at the minute who understands zero English. Can’t make a cup of tea as she didn’t know what a spoon was. I had to show her how to mix the tea bag. I have NO idea how she is going to understand hoisting instructions. It will be dangerous for the service users. Let’s not say anything though for fear of being labelled.

For all I know this lady is super intelligent, however the language barrier is a problem.

@HelloMissus

For the same reason certain wards in Bolton are seeing alarmingly high rates of COVID (it’s not a city wide problem at all).

But to say so bluntly is considered racist.

Yet, it seems to me almost more racist to not recognise what’s happening and allow this community to get ill and die in disproportionate numbers and encouraging a community divide that is already problematic.

Indeed. There are some people that have religious worries and worries in ethnic groups. That's a fact and not racist to say so. The care home boss on tv this morning wasn't being racist when he said some people from certain ethnicities have concerns, it was merely a fact. Yet already someone up thread suggests otherwise.

Sad really, since people from these groups are more likely to die or have serious complications.

If I were a care worker reading this thread, I would feel totally justified in believing that most people view care workers as expendable idiots and would therefore have zero trust or faith in anything that the powers that be told me I had to do.

My colleagues wife is a late twenties BAME care worker. She's not had it (and worn be for a while) because she's 1st trimester with a rainbow baby and isn't prepared to take any risks, which I can totally appreciate.
Her DH wasn't going to have it whilst they were trying to conceive but now she is pregnant he"s immediately been and had his.

Misinformation and ignorance. I’ve yet to see that care workers are privy to exclusive data that the 2.4 billion who have been jabbed worldwide don’t have access to - it’s the same stuff about ‘long term safety’, ‘trial stage’, ‘fertility’, ‘rushed vaccines’, etc.

@Tootsey11

A lot of attitudes on this thread make me sick.

How do any of you know what education any of the staff have. You lot are insulting b*stards.

I worked in a care home and semi secure unit years ago. I did payroll and sat in on interviews and basically education requirements were none. Clear DBS check and anyone the job centre sent along to interview that appeared to want to work. Sad but true and a fact. Some struggled with the language barrier, some couldn't get other jobs and some worked since they could pick shifts that suiting their home life (children. parents to care for so working patterns around that).

That is fact. Some people do have less education that others, that is a fact and many work in care. That's not an insult at all, it's just a fact.

I really disagree with posters saying that care workers lack critical thinking skills and education.

It is a skilled sector and people will hold qualifications, or be working towards them.

Critical thinking is required every minute of every day in roles while caring for people!

And I do agree that a mistrust in authority and the medical establishment can be a factor for those who are hesitant in taking the vaccine.

I’ve not looked into where or when this statistic about 1/6th not being vaccinated came about, but it doesn’t tell a full story. For example, people in some areas might not have the same access to appointments as others.

Over 80% sounds like a high uptake. This is likely to rise as vaccination becomes more routine.

@MissCrowley

It's nothing to do with being uneducated. That's absolutely ridiculous. Someone I know who works extremely high up in the criminal agency isn't having theirs due to infertility issues with the vaccine. Not everyone who doesn't want the vaccine is a fucking gammon thank you very much.

Agreed

A client of mine is a young doctor. She wants to ttc and really doesn't want the vaccine as she is concerned about potential effects on her fertility

However her bosses are putting a lot of pressure on 😞

@Walkaround

If I were a care worker reading this thread, I would feel totally justified in believing that most people view care workers as expendable idiots and would therefore have zero trust or faith in anything that the powers that be told me I had to do.

I don't think they are expendable idiots. Many of them work extremely hard for low pay. Many are very caring. That doesn't alter the fact that few qualifications are required for general care work and that many staff have few qualifications. It's not rude, it's just a fact.

Perhaps, it is time for a shift and upskilling of care workers and better pay and conditions? However, that means the care home bosses, or society will need to pay more to sort the situation. It is difficult to recruit in care due to the pay and conditions. There are easier jobs to do for people with qualifications and choices.

Especially because it doesn’t stop you transmitting or getting covid and the number of adverse reactions if you look it up is higher than any other injection.

Transmission rates in a household half if just one person has received their first vaccination. There is a difference between scientists saying 'we don't yet have data on the impact on transmission' and them saying 'there is no impact on transmission', when we started mass vaccination the first was true, we are monitoring the impact on transmission and immunologists and virologists are confident transmission will be shown to be reduced by vaccination. It would be an unusual vaccine if it didn't prevent transmission.

Please provide the data comparing the adverse reactions from different 'injections'. The data from the trials did not show anything unusual. The (very rare) blood clotting issue with AZ has been seen with other AAV vaccines and since Covid itself has a massive impact on blood clotting any issues need to be looked at in that context. The JCVI and MHRC have been very transparent about their reasoning for changing the age ratings.

There has been a massive effort by the whole pharmaceutical industry to make effective vaccines as quickly as possible, it's just 18 months since the virus was sequenced and over a quarter of the world's population have now been vaccinated. To put that into context the second quickest vaccine to be developed was polio and that took 5 years to just develop a vaccine.

David Olosuga has a programme about the history of vaccines on iplayer at the moment. There's some interviews with people who worked on the smallpox and polio irradiation vaccination programmes, they make it very clear that you have to listen to and address the concerns of those who are reluctant to be vaccinated if we wish to reduce the spread of disease. It's easy to dismiss anti-vaxxers but it doesn't change anything.

Have a look at this data for care workers:

www.skillsforcare.org.uk/adult-social-care-workforce-data/Workforce-intelligence/publications/national-information/The-state-of-the-adult-social-care-sector-and-workforce-in-England.aspx

The go to the qualifications section:

90% of care workers in adult care have under level 4 qualifications. Only 10% have qualifications above level 4. Most have entry or level 1 qualifications - A level 2 qualification is similar to a GCSE.

Care certificates, moving and handling, etc etc etc are considered low level qualifications.

@Roonerspismed

Because they are young, female and there are serious questions about its long term safety.

There are thousands of women alleging long term menstrual changes post vaccine. Thousands - but the NHS tells them it’s not connected

I'm a Carer but I seriously wish I'd never had mine done. I had an early miscarriage after the first one. The second one has stopped my periods completely and I've suffered from horrendous headaches ever since. I only had mine done because I felt forced into having it.

@June2021 - “ I don't think they are expendable idiots. Many of them work extremely hard for low pay. Many are very caring. That doesn't alter the fact that few qualifications are required for general care work and that many staff have few qualifications. It's not rude, it's just a fact.

Perhaps, it is time for a shift and upskilling of care workers and better pay and conditions? However, that means the care home bosses, or society will need to pay more to sort the situation. It is difficult to recruit in care due to the pay and conditions. There are easier jobs to do for people with qualifications and choices.”

This is just another way of confirming that most people think care workers are expendable idiots. Unfortunately, there is no academic test or certificate for compassion, patience or empathy - just lots of people needed to do the physically and emotionally hard work few people have the compassion, patience, energy, resilience or empathy to cope with day after day.

Yes its about socioeconomic group, no its not because they are thick and uneducated.

The thing that people on this thread don't seem to realise is for many people from poor backgrounds (myself included) the state isn't a set of services you can access but a system that does stuff to you. Its not to be trusted, you know too many victims of it. You may have been a victim yourself. It can take your kids away, or put them in a special school or stop your benefits for any number of reasons. Now it can decide you have to have a vaccine for a job and then sanction your benefits if you don't have it.

It's not that you lack critical thinking skills, it's lack of trust. I do not trust the state to act in my best interests because it never has.

@MakkaPakkas

My guess (I lecture on similar subjects). Being a care worker is correlated with low income & low socioeconomic status, which is in turn associated with a lack of trust in authority. This lack of trust may be well founded - perhaps they've had poor experiences with medics, PIP assessors etc... These things are not usually a result of lack of intelligence or thinking skills. They're about trust. For those questioning why ethnic minorities might have a reluctance, we could think about the kinds of healthcare inequalities BAME people experience and historic abuse. For example, the Tuckergee experiments in the US where black men were left with untreated syphilis for decades whilst being told they were getting free medical care (this ended in the 1970s). If you come from a group that is badly treated by the authorities you'll tend to have lower trust.

Durig your next lecture, you might want to get the spelling right!!

It's Tuskegee - not Tuckergee.

Actually the take up isn't particularly poor. The statistics appear poor because it is really hard to get details to confirm who are care workers in each region. There is no national list of care workers in care homes, domestic care workers, volunteer support organisations etc all of which fall into this bundle.

All have been offered the vaccine via self declaration on the web / 119 earlier than their age cohort. Take appeared to be really good for our region. Anecdotally it's almost everyone. But we can't prove it.

Are stats can only show the ones we can correlate to official lists, so NHS workers, staff at the larger homes etc. the others we can't report so it looks like fewer are vaccinated than actually are.

bumbley yes I know there can be side effects of the flu vaccine, just like any other vaccine.

I also know that many cases of flu can be asymptomatic. I've never knowingly had flu.......

But if 75% of cases can be asymptomatic and with the knowledge that a vaccine does not give you full protection and the flu can be deadly, even when vaccinated- why would a care home manager not get vaccinated?

I'm sorry, but this is complete madness and some people really need to get a grip.

I wonder if there's also an element of concern over being ill from potential side effects of the vaccine, and having to either take unpaid time off, or being forced to work whilst unwell? The care industry is sadly known for its treatment of employees.

There were young women I knew of picking up Facebook rumours on alleged effects.

Also I had both jabs and my super regular periods are round the fucking bend. The when I first noticed this back in January the official line was that it doesn't effect them despite there being dozens of women on the Internet and irl saying the same thing. I am not ttc and never will be again but if I were it would give me pause.

Its not so much that I actually believe it affects fertility but the flat denial of women's experiences. They were either lying or didn't care enough to monitor it. It does not help with trust.