Covid vaccines: Care homes set to lose thousands of staffpublished at 17:31 British Summer Time 16 September 2021
Care home providers in the West Midlands face losing more than 5,000 staff due to the government's policy of requiring all workers to be fully vaccinated, a care firm boss has said.
From October, anyone working in a Care Quality Commission-registered care home in England must have two vaccine doses unless they have a medical exemption.
Geoff Butcher, who owns the Field House care home in Stourbridge, as well as five other homes around the West Midlands, said he had six staff out of a total of 260 who were refusing the jab.
The six, including four highly skilled workers, "will have to leave our employment on 11 November," he said.
"Across the West Midlands the figures are that there's about 5,600 staff who will not be vaccinated and will therefore have to leave work - and that's quite a high proportion of the workforce."
He said it was a "good thing" to have a high proportion of staff vaccinated, "but the way it's been done - I don't agree with".
"Staffing in the care sector is incredibly difficult at the moment, there's probably 20 to 25% vacancies, and people are leaving the sector faster than they're being rehired - putting this on top of that is a major problem."