Coronavirus: Health Education

(asked on 19th February 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that (a) emergency support and (b) specialised guidance on (i) covid-19 and (ii) covid-19 vaccines are provided to (A) disabled people and (B) people with a learning disability during the covid-19 outbreak.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 2nd March 2021

We have provided over £1 million funding to learning disability and autism charities to support their COVID-19 response. We have advised people with specific health conditions, who are deemed to be clinically extremely vulnerable to COVID-19, to shield and providing direct support to the shielded population by enabling access to the NHS Volunteer Responders programme, which is available to anyone self-isolating.

We are implementing the national Adult Social Care Winter Plan to ensure that high-quality, safe and timely care is provided, whilst protecting people from COVID-19 and increasing access to testing in care homes, launching regular retesting in high risk supported living settings and publishing new guidance on regular testing for domiciliary care staff.  We published a range of tailored guidance to help protect people with a learning disability and autistic people during the pandemic.  We have also ensured that important health communications are available in alternative, accessible formats.

We have also ensured that support and guidance about getting a COVID-19 vaccine have been made available to disabled people, including people with a learning disability. We have prioritised people with a learning disability who are on a general practitioner learning disability register in priority group six for vaccination, in line with guidance from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and made available a wide range of accessible and easy read resources on the COVID-19 vaccine.

Reticulating Splines