Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of classifying staff of school students with special needs as frontline health and care staff for the rollout of the covid-19 vaccine.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advises that the first priorities for any COVID-19 vaccination programme should be to reduce COVID-19 mortality and protect the health and social care staff and systems. As a result, they have based their prioritisation largely on age and those with clinical risk factors aged 16 years old and above.

The Department is continuing to work with its partners to understand what this means for teachers and staff working in special needs schools. The current advice states that if someone is regularly working with clinically extremely vulnerable individuals or those who have underlying health conditions, they should receive the vaccine in line with 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.