Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make foster parents a priority group to receive the covid-19 vaccine.

Based on the clinical assessment that most children are not considered to be at increased risk of COVID-19 mortality, being a foster carer alone is not cause for prioritisation for a COVID-19 vaccination. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advises that only those children at very high risk of exposure and serious outcomes, such as older children with severe neuro-disabilities within residential care, should be offered vaccination as part of phase one. There are currently no plans to prioritise foster parents not in the first nine priority groups in the next phase of the COVID-19 vaccination programme.

Unpaid carers are included in the JCVI’s priority group six, which includes individuals who are eligible for a carer’s allowance, or those who are the sole or primary carer of an elderly or disabled person who is at increased risk of COVID-19 mortality and therefore clinically vulnerable. This means that if a foster parent or carer is the sole or primary carer of a child who was prioritised for vaccination in cohorts four or six, they will be offered the vaccination in cohort six.