STAFF at a Limerick charity were told to misrepresent themselves as frontline healthcare workers to be vaccinated against Covid- 19, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Almost 70 employees at the Northside Family Resource Centre were vaccinated in this fashion – including cleaners, kitchen workers and administration staff who are working from home.
In a letter to staff obtained by the MoS, CEO Ciara Kane instructed them to represent themselves as Category 2(e) frontline healthcare workers on the HSE’s vaccination portal. Ms Kane also warned employees not to speak of their inoculation.
‘While there will be great excitement getting your vaccination, I would ask that you maintain discretion by refraining from posting on social media and broadcasting it generally,’ she wrote. ‘There has been political and media backlash against charity staff being vaccinated and the best thing is to avoid this if possible,’ the letter concluded.
In a separate email to employees, the CEO warned that sharing the details of how they were being vaccinated could ‘impact on all our eligibility to be vaccinated and could result in sanctions’.
Several childcare workers from the centre spoke to the MoS on condition of anonymity, to express their concern at the way they had been vaccinated.
‘We are terrified now that we’ll be questioned when we go for our second vaccine,’ said one. ‘We’re worried now that, having been told it was all above board, we are now going to get into trouble.’
Under the priority list in operation at the time the staff were vaccinated, childcare workers ranked in the 11th category along with teachers. But childcare workers at the centre were told to represent themselves as frontline healthcare workers in category 2(e), something that allowed them to jump the queue.
Those who spoke to the MoS say they were not asked for ID at the vaccination centre. Category 2(e) workers are defined as ‘healthcare workers who deal with scheduled care patients in an uncontrolled environment on a regular basis’.
This includes the ‘delivery of care by appointment in a patient/service user’s home’ such as ‘home support, community delivered services, public health services, social care services, non-emergency patient/service user transport, residential and respite services’.
One childcare worker told the MoS: ‘We were told to say we are family support workers. We’re not. We don’t go to houses. We work in a crèche. It’s not just childcare workers that got vaccinated. The cleaners got vaccinated. The kitchen staff got vaccinated.
Staff that work from home that haven’t been back into the centre got vaccinated. The whole building got put down as family support workers. Everyone in the kitchen staff that cooks the dinners from the crèche – they all got it done.’
Another childcare worker, who was also told to misrepresent herself as a family support worker, said they now fear what will happen when they report for their second dose.
‘A family support worker would go into homes,’ they said. ‘They call to the elderly. My title in the service is a childcare worker. The children come to me. We don’t go into their homes. We were hoodwinked. We’re horrified. I know people who are seriously ill who should have been vaccinated before us. I have relatives with cancer who are not vaccinated.’
The latest revelations contradict claims by Health Service Executive chiefs that there has not been widespread abuse of the vaccine portal system.
Our sister paper, the Irish Daily Mail, this week revealed how easy it was to dupe the portal system into believing a user is a healthcare worker to jump the vaccine queue.
The MoS has previously revealed how we were able to book a vaccination appointment using false information. Today, we can reveal that we got a vaccination for a person who we told the HSE, six weeks ago, was a bogus healthcare worker. The revelation that childcare workers and other non-priority employees were vaccinated at the Northside Family Resource Centre comes as other crèche workers nationwide are demanding to be prioritised.
On Wednesday, the Federation of Early Childhood Providers (FECP), which represents 1,700 crèches across the country, sought an urgent meeting with Health Minister Stephen Donnelly to seek higher prioritisation. However, Northside centre CEO Ms Kane has defended her decision on vaccinating the staff.
‘Ultimately, I stand over the decision that I had to make in about half an hour. Because that’s all the time you get in situations like this,’ she told the MoS. ‘I get that it’s a story. I get it. And I understand the upset because I feel it myself in relation to the vaccination programme but I can stand over those decisions,’ she said. She said she instructed employees to represent themselves as category 2(e) frontline healthcare workers after getting an email from Tusla, one of the centre’s funders.
‘In the email there was recommendations of, like, what you would be because we’re not healthcare workers, and not employed directly by the HSE, so we got recommendations on where to put us. So it was like okay, grand. We’ll do that. That’s all it was.’
She justified the vaccination of childcare, cleaning, admin and kitchen staff, ahead of gardaÃ
and other frontline workers, saying everyone at the centre had helped with services in the community in the pandemic.
Consequently, she said her staff had been categorised for vaccination by the work they were doing rather than their job titles. ‘It’s a pandemic. It was all hands on deck.
There was no job titles. We just all mucked in and, as a consequence, we were all vaccinated because of the uncontrolled environment and because of the risk group as well – because of who the clients are,’ she added.
‘Many of our early-years workers, along with ourselves and our family support workers, and everybody were out. We were doing home visits. We were doing suicide interventions. We were going into direct provision centres. We were working with people in their homes. We didn’t vaccinate by job title because we responded frontline.’
Staff confirmed childcare and other such workers did help to provide homecare packages and Meals on Wheels. They said they were told not to go into any homes.
‘We weren’t in the houses,’ one staff member said. ‘Even the Meals on Wheels left dinners at the front doors to protect the elderly.’
In response to a query from the Mail, Tusla, which part funds the charity, said: ‘We are concerned about issues raised in relation to the vaccination of some staff at the Northside Family Resource Centre, which would appear to be contrary to the guidance on vaccinations issued by Tusla.’
The State’s child and family agency added in its statement: ‘Tusla was absolutely clear in all of our communications with the Northside Family Resource Centre that only frontline staff in categories 2 a- 2g should register for the vaccine at this time. We have been assured by the CEO of the Family Resource Centre that no Tusla correspondence, or, advice was issued to them that was contrary to this.’
Childcare workers at the centre were first informed they would be vaccinated in an email from the CEO on February 11 – the day after the HSE’s portal for frontline workers went live. The email read: ‘As a member of the Family Resource Centre Programme you are now able to apply for the vaccine which you must do individually.
‘Having assessed your role within the Family Resource Centre you are classed as 2(e) on the priority listing. This categorisation is based on the fact we are a Family Resource Centre, not based on your job title or description.’
The email warned staff not to speak of their vaccination appointment. ‘It is critically important this is not leaked outside of the organisation as it could affect our ability to be vaccinated,’ it stated.
‘I would ask that your vaccination status remain confidential and is not discussed inside or outside the organisation.’ After they registered as healthcare workers on the system, the employees then received a letter from their CEO informing them they would be vaccinated during the first weekend of March at Limerick’s Radisson Hotel Last night, Siptu Health Division chief Kevin Figgis said he was not surprised by these revelations because of the large numbers of vaccinations attributed to frontline workers that the HSE IT systems can’t properly account for. According to HSE data about 50,000 vaccines administered have no grade assigned to them on the portal.
‘It does appear vaccinations were given out and administered locally, not necessarily in adherence to the actual priority list,’ he said. ‘The IT system is supposed to be enabled so the correct people are registered in line with the sequencing document. In addition to that, when people arrive to have their vaccine the information they have provided is supposed to be double checked to ensure that it is valid.’
However, in two instances in which the MoS posed as healthcare workers to test the system we were not told to bring work IDs to the vaccination centre.
A HSE spokesman last night, said: ‘We are not aware of this particular issue. We have issued and restated very clear guidance on vaccination sequencing including the sequencing and registration process for healthcare workers.’
Cleaners, cooks and even workers from home all got the jab
SHE begins to speak, but then breaks down in tears.
Like everyone, the employee – a dedicated childcare worker with Limerick’s Northside Family Resource Centre – has had just about enough of this pandemic and its evils.
But now, on top of everything else, she feels guilty that she was vaccinated when she feels she should not have been.
Though they are childcare workers – and not frontline healthcare employees – staff at the centre were instructed to misrepresent themselves to get vaccinated.
‘We were told to class ourselves as family support workers and we’re not. A family support worker would go into homes. They call to the elderly. My title in the service is a childcare worker. The children come to me. We don’t go into their homes.’
But now, in the wake of scandals such as the Beacon Hospital vaccination affair and concerns about the possible widespread abuse of the system, the employee is worried.
‘We were made to believe that it was fully cleared with the HSE – that we were doing nothing wrong. We’re worried now that we’ll get into trouble. We didn’t know we were doing it wrongly.
‘We were hoodwinked. We’re horrified. I know people who are seriously ill who should have been vaccinated before us. I have relatives with cancer who are not vaccinated.
‘I took it that maybe the family resource services across the country are being done, but when I looked that up yesterday [I saw] they’re still fighting to be vaccinated. So that’s not the case. It’s morally wrong.’
Another thing troubling the employee is why she and her colleagues were told to keep their vaccinations secret, if they were entitled to them as maintained by management.
‘The reason we were told to keep it quiet was seemingly there was another community crèche up the country that did the same and the media didn’t get it.’
Another childcare worker at the centre has similar concerns about the secrecy.
‘We got a letter saying not to say anything to anyone,’ they told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
‘I just think it’s disgusting We were told to say we are family support workers – we’re not. We don’t go to houses. We work in a crèche.
‘It’s not just childcare workers that got vaccinated. The cleaners got vaccinated. The kitchen staff got vaccinated.
‘Staff that work from home that haven’t been back into the centre got vaccinated. The whole building got put down as family support workers.
‘Everyone in the kitchen staff that cooks the dinners from the crèche – they all got it done.’
The worker was horrified to learn that other childcare staff around the country are in the news this week, fighting to be prioritised, demanding urgent meetings with Health Minister Stephen Donnelly.
‘It’s not right. We’re supposed to stand together with childcare workers. My issue was we’re standing up for childcare – for us to be recognised not just as glorified babysitters and we’re supposed to stand together. We didn’t stand together. They made us go against our profession.’
The CEO of the Northside Family Resource Centre, Ciara Kane, insists she and her staff were entitled to be vaccinated because they were going into people’s homes.
‘The things I saw during this pandemic I have never seen in 20 years,’ Ms Kane told the MoS.
‘I walked into homes that people wouldn’t walk into in non-Covid times and I find it really difficult and now I’m getting upset because I’m tired. And I’m tired of this pandemic. I’m tired of seeing children suffering. I’ve seen hunger for the first time in my career. We’ve always seen poor nutrition in our communities but I’ve never seen hunger at this level before. It was me going into these homes and who was beside me? My early-years workers. They were going into the homes with me. That’s why they were vaccinated. And that’s your story.’
But those who spoke to the MoS said they were explicitly told not to enter houses.
‘We weren’t in the houses. None of the childcare staff set foot inside anybody’s door. Even the Meals on Wheels left dinners at the front doors to protect the elderly. There was no setting foot in anybody’s property at all. Yes, I went and dropped care packages to homes but I didn’t go in the door. We were told to knock on the door, put the package down and step back.’
