Health Secretary Sajid Javid has announced that all care home visitors, apart from those giving personal care, will no longer have to test for Covid and tests will continue to be free for staff and residents, according to the government’s ‘Living with Covid’ guidance.
Free testing for the public ended on 1 April but all those living and working in ‘high risk settings’ such as care home, hospices and home care organisations will still receive free lateral flow testing.
Free testing needed for visitors ‘to safely visit’ residents
The majority of visitors to adult social care settings including care homes will not be required to take a test according to the new guidance.
Only the ‘small number of care home visitors who provide personal care’, known as essential caregivers, still need to test. They will be able to get free tests but will not need to test more than twice a week.
Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, said the government has “forgotten” that visitors to care homes need testing so they can “safely visit their relatives”.
He said: “This must be funded by the government.”
A high street chemist has revealed it will charge £17 for a pack of four lateral flow tests.
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The majority of home care bosses (58 per cent) have said they will not be seeking overseas recruitment and will instead focus on hiring locally to fill job vacancies, despite care workers being added to the government’s Shortage Occupation List (SOL).
The stark reality was revealed by a recent poll of 296 home care providers in England. The members of the Homecare Association gave a variety of reasons for their decision which included the cost and complexity of sponsorship and the issue of foreign workers not having a valid driving licence or car to do the job.
The government announced last December that care workers would be added to its list of occupations with a shortage of skilled workers on 15 February – a change supposed to make it easier for the care sector to recruit from abroad. However, bosses have said the application process is bureaucratic, expensive and far from quick.
Home care providers surveyed also said they would not be hiring from abroad because of an inability to meet the minimum salary requirement. To qualify to work in the UK, carers will need to earn an annual salary minimum of £20,480 – equivalent to £10.10 an hour.
For the full story visit the homecare.co.uk website.
Following predictions the NHS would be hit by a loss of over 70,000 frontline staff and a fifth of the home care workforce would quit if the mandate was introduced in April, Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced yesterday evening to the House of Commons that the government is removing the legal requirement for all health and social care staff in England to be double jabbed against COVID-19.
The mandate for care home staff to have the jab came into force on 11 November and led to thousands of care workers being sacked.
Mr Javid said: “While vaccination remains our very best line of defence against COVID-19, I believe it is no longer proportionate to require Vaccination as a Condition of Deployment through statute.
“So, Madam Deputy Speaker, today I am announcing that we will launch a consultation on ending Vaccination as a Condition of Deployment in health and all social care settings.
“I have always been clear that our rules must remain proportionate and balanced – and of course, should we see another dramatic change in the virus, it would be responsible to review this policy again.”
Mr Javid explained that the vaccine mandate was put in place because of the severity of the Delta variant, but now with the Omicron variant being the dominant variant and less severe plus the success of the vaccine rollout, he says it is only right the policy was reviewed.
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