Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what advice he has received on making homelessness workers and the street homeless priority groups within the covid-19 vaccination programme.

NHS England and NHS Improvement are working with voluntary community and social enterprise partners, inclusion health providers and others to develop an accessible model for delivery of the vaccine to people from inclusion health populations.

In the immediate period we are asking partners to support their clients and service users to register with a general practice, where they are not already and, if they have health conditions that would make them clinically vulnerable/clinically extremely vulnerable that this is recorded to ensure they receive the vaccine in line with the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation’s (JCVI) advice on prioritisation.

Homelessness workers may be categorised as frontline healthcare workers or social care workers. If they are frontline health care workers, they will be vaccinated in priority group two. If they are frontline social care workers, the local authority Director of Adult Social Services should have ultimate responsibility for identifying eligible social care workers, underlined by the principle aim of achieving high rates of vaccination amongst frontline social care workers who work closely and regularly with those who are clinically vulnerable to COVID-19.