With the government’s deadline for care workers to receive mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations rapidly approaching, the care sector is facing its worst staff shortage in years.
Under the new rules, care workers in England must be double vaccinated by 11th November 2021 to continue working in care homes.
Early in the pandemic, Healthcare Management Solutions took the decision to educate its teams about the vaccine rather than mandating it. The organisation pointed its teams to credible sources of information about the Covid-19 vaccination and its benefits in protecting the most vulnerable in society. In doing so, Healthcare Management Solutions hoped to help staff make more informed choices.
During an interview with TalkRadio, Tony Stein, CEO of Healthcare Management Solutions, said: “We didn’t want the vaccine to be mandatory. We went down a different route. We started very early on in the pandemic trying to provide our staff with the right information. There was a lot of rubbish out there on social media that made people genuinely scared to get vaccinated.”
“We’ve had an incredible success rate in getting people to be vaccinated and that was simply through signposting them to good information.”
The Challenges of Replacing Valuable People
Out of 2700 staff, with the government’s mandatory vaccination deadline getting closer, Healthcare Management Solutions stands to lose around 31 team members on 11th November. Mr Stein argues that the relatively low numbers are indicative of how successful the educational approach could have been given more time.
In the same interview, Tony added: “This is another 31 people that we’ve invested in, that we’ve trained and have got experience. But, more importantly, they have cared for and developed relationships with those residents in our homes and we’re going to lose them and have to replace them at a very difficult time.”
The care sector has struggled with staffing problems over a number of years, and this problem has further increased since the start of the pandemic.
In a recent interview with LBC, Tony Stein said: “We’ve laboured for many years now under a staffing issue in the care sector. Trying to find nurses, trying to find carers. Even now, we’re struggling to find catering staff and domestic staff. It’s an ongoing problem for care operators and this is only going to make it worse.”
More Information
Healthcare Management Solutions offers a full care home management solution, taking care of everything from quality monitoring to operations, HR to IT. With the ability to provide robust policies and procedures alongside digital systems to monitor service performance, we can help you navigate the challenges you may be facing.
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