Childhood immunisations (0-5)

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For support with childhood immunisations at your practice, contact the NCL Vaccinations and Prevention team.

Named immunisation leads

All practices are required to have a named vaccination/immunisation lead. This is part of the NICE guidance for vaccine uptake in the general population and is also a contractual requirement for practices.

Practices should ensure that the Prevention and Vaccination team has the up-to-date, correct information regarding their immunisation lead(s), including:

  • their name
  • their job title
  • their email address.

To help decide on the best person to be your immunisation lead, the following description from the GMS Contract may be useful.

The role of the named lead includes:

  • taking responsibility for the oversight of these services, including that core standards are being met and that opportunities for vaccination are maximised within the practice
  • to disseminate information to the right people in your practice, depending on the content of email communications
  • working with others within and without the practice, including primary care networks, NHS England public health commissioning, Child Health Information Services, school-aged vaccination services and local authority public health colleagues (who work with health visitors and school nursing teams), to understand the current position and where this can be improved if required.

It is recommended that practices consider having two immunisation leads: one clinical (likely a nurse) and one non-clinical (likely an administrator). This model is effective as one of the leads can focus on the clinical side of immunisations (such as discussions with hesitant parents, understanding the process for parents around immunising their child) and the other can focus on the administrative side (such as ordering immunisations, having appointment slots available, organising immunisation sessions, leading call/recall).

Review date: Friday, 29 January 2027