Tens of thousands of care workers are set to leave the sector this week, as the law stipulating that care workers must be fully vaccinated comes into force.
Reports suggest 60,000 care home staff will be leave their jobs instead of getting their two Covid jabs. Data from the Department of Health and Social Care also suggests 105,000 domiciliary care workers (carers who offer support in the community) have not been reported as fully vaccinated.
The law, which comes into force in England on November 11, will have a life-changing impact on those leaving the industry, but also those left behind, including vaccinated care home staff and their residents.
Sandra*, who has worked in the social care sector for 14 years, says the past 19 months have been among the hardest of her career.
Like carers across the country, the 51-year-old from Greater Manchester worked through each of the lockdowns. She says the 150-bed home she works at was already short-staffed before the new law was introduced.
“The main problem was staff contracting Covid or their families, and then having to isolate for two weeks which left us short staffed a lot of the time,” she says. “We used agency quite a lot, but unfortunately not a lot of the people we used have been vaccinated, so we will not be able to use them again.”
Using temporary agency staff to plug staffing gaps is not unusual in the care home sector, but the pool of contractors is now likely to shrink, too.
For Sandra, the decision to get vaccinated was an easy one. She says most permanent staff in her home have done the same. People have also applied for open vacancies, with two new vaccinated staff set to start this week, so she’s hopeful they’ll be able to cope without agency staff.
“We were hit quite bad during Covid – residents and staff – I watched a lot of the residents pass away and I don’t want to have to go through that again,” she says. “That’s why I think all staff should be vaccinated to protect themselves and the people they care for.”
Rachel Harrison, national officer at GMB, the union for care workers, says the industry was already facing 170,000 vacancies by the end of the year before the vaccine mandate. She believes this is largely due to the low pay of care staff, causing some to leave the sector and putting others off joining.
“The care sector is past a crisis – it’s on the verge of collapse,” she says. “The workforce can’t cope. GMB is campaigning for a minimum of £15 an hour for care workers, professionalisation of the service, an end to zero hours contracts and proper sick pay.
“Anything less and dedicated carers will continue to leave the profession and the sector will implode.”
The new law stipulates that care home staff in England must be fully vaccinated, but HuffPost UK has spoken to a care home worker in Scotland who says she has already been fired from her workplace after refusing to be vaccinated.
Faye*, a 34-year-old carer based in Angus, had worked full-time in the care home for five and a half years. She was on a zero hours contract, but every week was assigned shifts and worked around 34 hours.
In August, she received a letter and an email, saying that by September 13, every member of staff was expected to be vaccinated.
She told her manager she didn’t want to get the vaccine and from the start of September, she started being left off the rota.
“I was still an employee, but they hadn’t given me any hours,” she says. “My manager told me she was going to speak to somebody from the company. I didn’t hear anything else from her for another three weeks until I got my P45.”
Faye says her reasons for not taking up the vaccine are religious and also that she does not believe it’s been tested extensively enough. She is concerned that low staffing will negatively impact vulnerable care home residents.
“I worry how it will impact residents. We’ve been short-staffed all the time anyway,” she says. ”[Carers are] rushed, they don’t spend enough time with the residents, it’s horrible.”
Faye is now working in a community care role, going into people’s private homes to provide care. As she’s in Scotland, she was able to secure the role without being vaccinated, but is concerned what will happen to her job longterm if the vaccine laws are extended.
This week, health secretary Sajid Javid confirmed all frontline NHS workers and social care staff in England will need to have Covid-19 vaccinations to continue in their jobs.
He said only those who do not have face-to-face contact with patients or who are medically exempt will be exempt from having to get double vaccinated – with enforcement of the rule from April 1, 2022
The decision also applies to health and wider social care settings that are regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
“I am worrying, because the care job is what I want to do and I’ve been doing this for many years,” says Faye. “But I’m not gonna take it. So if I have to lose the job, then I will, I will lose the job.”
Department of Health data suggests 92.8% of NHS workers have had their first dose and 89.9% have had both doses, while in social care, 83.7% of domiciliary care workers have had their first dose and 74.6% have had both doses.
Sam*, a 41-year-old director and manager of a care organisation in Northampton, is not convinced that vaccines will actually be made mandatory for NHS staff.
“That will never happen, it couldn’t go on,” he says of the NHS. “How dare the government test this on social care? It makes me very angry.”
He says the vaccine mandate has caused “huge stress” for care home managers. “We’re struggling with recruitment as it is – where Amazon can offer someone £12 an hour, we just can’t compete,” he says.
“We’ve had about 10% staff not want the vaccine. One staff member in particular was so anxious she couldn’t sleep for weeks and was physically sick that she may lose her job, where she has worked for 10 years. She had a bad reaction many years ago from a flu jab and is genuinely very very scared about having the vaccine.”
Sam has chosen to be vaccinated himself, but does have sympathy for staff who are nervous about the jabs. In his organisation, they’ve redeployed staff who aren’t vaccinated to roles where they aren’t entering the home, to avoid people losing their jobs.
“We are carers, our job is to care for people,” he says. “This includes our staff and the last two years have been extremely difficult, where without our amazing team we wouldn’t have been able to cope. We are nothing without them.”
The nation has been repeatedly warned we’re set for a “challenging winter”, so the impact of the new vaccine law is likely to become apparent in care homes within weeks.
How the situation is handled could provide us with some insight into what faces the NHS when the law is extended fully in 2022.
HuffPost UK asked the Department of Health and Social Care how to plans to cope with a shortfall of staff in the sector. A spokesperson said: “Our message is clear: vaccines save lives and while staff and residents in care homes have been prioritised and the majority are now vaccinated, it is our responsibility to do everything we can to protect vulnerable people.
“We are working closely with local authorities and care home providers to ensure there will always be enough staff with the right skills to deliver high quality care.”
Although it may mean tougher shifts for vaccinated carers like Sandra, she still thinks a vaccine mandate is the right decision and is proud to continue in a “very challenging but very rewarding” job.
“I can see both sides of the argument about people losing their jobs, but they have known about this for a long time now,” she says. “Speaking for the families on my unit, all of them agree they would rather their family members are cared for by people vaccinated rather than not.”
* Some surnames have been omitted and names changed to offer anonymity.