With the changes to restrictions in England (guidance for Wales where many restrictions remain in place and guidance for England ) today, I wanted to provide an update with regards to keeping people connected and safe across MacIntyre.
As infection rates once again dramatically rise we will be maintaining the current safety protocols across all of our settings. It is important that people who draw on our support do not experience greater restrictions or isolation than others. Support will be on hand to ensure that everyone can make decisions about opening up in ways that feel right and make sense to them.
To ensure that MacIntyre is a safe place to live, learn and work the infection control measures we have in place and in particular the wearing of masks will not change. In addition, the maintenance of our current testing regimes becomes even more important so we will continue to robustly test in accordance with our setting guidance.
We know that the vaccination programme is a key defence for people who draw on our support and for all our employees. Our current vaccination take up is as follows, 99% of people who draw on our support in registered care have had at least one vaccine, 95% of people who draw on our support and live in a supported living setting have had at least one vaccine and an overall average of 86% of the workforce have engaged in the vaccination programme.
The proposal to make vaccinations mandatory for people working in care homes was passed in law by the government last week. As a result MacIntyre will now consult directly with the 11% of people working in our care homes who are yet to have the jab. This new law will come into force in October with a 16-week grace period and I am hoping that we can achieve full take up by the deadline set by the Government.
The consultation is ongoing for all other Health and Social Care settings and I am fully expecting that the Government will make the vaccination mandatory for all other Health and Social Care settings.
I should like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who draws on our support, our staff colleagues and everyone else associated with MacIntyre for their understanding and co-operation with all the measures and guidance which we have been following since early last year. We recognise this has been a really difficult time and that we have only managed to keep so many people safe by all working together.
We will continue to provide updates as the guidance changes.
Sarah Burslem
CEO
