15 January 2021
In the current tightened Covid-19 lockdown measures, we recognise that some registrants are finding it harder to meet work commitments because of the loss of school places, are anxious about being, or have actually been, stopped and questioned as to their lawful reason for leaving home for work, and are not being given the same priority for vaccines that those they work with alongside in health and social care and other public services are receiving. The latter in particular is very stressful because of the risks from close proximity and hands-on work even with current PPE. The consequent effect on Deaf and hard of hearing people relying on those public services could be devastating putting life, access and rights at risk.
NRCPD strongly believes that registrants working within and alongside the strategic public services such as health and social care and the others listed by the government, are key workers and must be recognised as such, and also should receive Covid-19 vaccines in the earliest priority groups. This does not apply to everyone registered with NRCPD given the huge variety of work undertaken, but we are keen to support those to whom it does.
So we have produced two 'bearer' letters that we hope you will find useful. The first is for you take to your employer to persuade them to designate you a key worker. The second is for you to show other organisations if you are not employed, or if you need to get recognition for vaccination or key worker status from someone other than your employer, such as schools or booking officers.
Registrants and Regulated Trainees can access both letters by signing into their online registration accounts.
Please use each letter to complement your own skills of persuasion as you make your case in order strengthen your chances of success. You should be working regularly in one of the key public services or certain critical parts of supply chain and industry as set out by the government at this link: https://www.gov.uk. This guidance has been updated recently to say that keyworkers should only seek school places when their children cannot be looked after at home.
Whilst we hope the letters help, we cannot guarantee that they will have the desired effect in your individual case. Please let us have feedback on your experience of using the letters - we will try and improve them where we can. If you would like to provide feedback, please contact us by email at: enquiries@nrcpd.org.uk or via VRS at: https://www.nrcpd.org.uk/vrs.
With thanks,
NRCPD.
