It was confirmed on 6 January 2022, when the new rules on mandatory vaccinations in wider health and social care settings passed into law, that where an organisation provides a CQC-regulated activity in health and social care, either in the public or private sector, those staff members who have face to face contact with service users, either as the main purpose of their role or passing social contact, including frontline staff such as carers and healthcare assistants, or those in non-clinical roles that are ancillary to the frontline, such as hospital porters or pharmacy assistants, who nevertheless have some contact with service users, will have to be fully vaccinated by 1 April 2022 (or medically exempt from being so). This means the clock is now ticking for those unvaccinated to become so.
Applying current guidelines on the gap between doses, the first vaccination will need to be administered by 3 February 2022 in order to meet this deadline.
It is likely these rules will apply to your client, and they need to start gathering information on who has, or not had, the vaccination amongst their staff. Those who have not had the vaccination should be encouraged to, unless they are exempt, and discussions will need to take place with the rest to find out why they are not. From 1 April 2022, those unvaccinated who are not exempt will not be able to be deployed in roles that involve contact with service users, even where they are wearing full PPE. As such, your client will need to start considering now what other roles these staff members can be redeployed too if they remain unvaccinated on 1 April 2022.
For those staff members who are unvaccinated on 1 April 2022, they will need to either be redeployed, or where that is not possible, dismissed. A full dismissal process will need to be followed, including consultation regarding their vaccination status and discussions of alternative jobs. Only once that has taken place would a dismissal with notice be possible, in order to avoid an unfair dismissal claim.
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