Success with the childhood flu vac service

Anil Sharma, pharmacy owner of a small group of pharmacies in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk, has been successful with provision of the new Childhood Flu Vaccination Service, as well as other vaccination services this season. This article looks at what Anil and his team have done to maximise the success of the Childhood Fu Vaccination Service, as well as other vaccination services, at their pharmacies.

The Childhood Flu Vaccination Service, commissioned as an Advanced service for a one-season trial of administering flu vaccinations to children aged 2-3 years, commenced on 1st October 2025 and finishes on 31st March 2026. The impact of community pharmacy participation in this vaccination programme will be evaluated after the 2025/26 season to inform policy decisions around whether the service will be commissioned in future years.

Anil, who is the Chair of Community Pharmacy Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and a regional Community Pharmacy England representative has shared what he and the team focused on to operate a successful vaccination campaign in their pharmacies in 2025/26. Anil felt that their success with the Childhood Flu Vaccination Service and other vaccinations services came from strong operational planning and service design across their vaccination offering in general.

They maximised their vaccination offering

Anil and his team were keen to sign up to the Childhood Flu Vaccination Service as this complemented the other vaccination services offered at their pharmacies (the Adult Flu Vaccination Service (NHS), the COVID-19 Vaccination Service and other private vaccination services).

Anil said “Pharmacy is the ideal place for patients to be vaccinated due to our accessibility and workforce. We have a trained and keen workforce raring to offer more vaccinations to patients. We saw this service as another opportunity for us to demonstrate that the sector can improve vaccination levels and we wanted to fully engage with this.”

They promoted the availability of the new service

Anil and his team maximised the use of ‘word of mouth’ to promote the new Childhood Flu Vaccination Service, highlighting it to all patients who came into their pharmacies with a child or to collect a prescription for a child. He also spoke to local nurseries to highlight the availability of the service who were keen to highlight the availability of this to parents/carers through their internal communication channels.

Anil said, “Even though some of the parents/carers we were talking to about the service may not have had children aged 2-3 years, we were conscious of the power of ‘word of mouth’. Carers/parents may have friends with children of different ages who they could tell about the service; we wanted to use every opportunity we could to ensure parents/carers were aware of the option of using our pharmacies to get their child vaccinated.”

They enhanced accessibility by offering vaccinations via both walk-in and appointment-based models

Although it is a service requirement to offer appointments through the National Booking Service (NBS) for the Childhood Flu Vaccination Service, Anil and his team also offered walk-in appointments for all their vaccination services to maximise availability and flexibility for patients.

As well as using NBS and ensuring their NHS website profiles were up to date so patients could find their pharmacies on the Flu Service Finder on the NHS website, the pharmacies also have their own booking platform on their website, again giving parents/carers more choice on how they access the service.

Anil said “We want to make it easy for patients to access vaccination services. Some patients want to be able to walk-in and wait and others like the guarantee of an appointment; by offering both we again highlight the accessibility and convenience we offer to patients for vaccination services”.

They ensured high availability of appointments by extending clinic hours where possible and maintaining flexibility in staffing

Anil and his team recognised the unique selling point of pharmacy; it’s accessibility. Therefore they ensured their vaccination clinics were available on weekends, as well as through the week.

Anil said “We were conscious that many parents/carers will be working during the week with children potentially being in childcare. Offering vaccinations only during the working week could make it more difficult for parents/carers to get their children vaccinated. We wanted to remove this barrier so we ensured we had clinics available on weekends as well as during the working week to maximise the opportunity for children to be vaccinated”.

They ensured stock of vaccines to minimise stock disruption and ensure continuity of access for patients

Vaccines for the Childhood Flu Vaccination Service are supplied centrally, therefore Anil made sure they signed up to the service in plenty of time before the deadline to ensure they received the centrally procured vaccine ahead of the start of the service.

Anil said “Being confident that we would have stock ahead of the start of the service was imperative as this allowed us to plan our walk-in and appointment offerings and manage capacity”.

Anil and his team were conscious that running out of vaccines for the other vaccination services, such as the Adult Flu Vaccination Service, could also disrupt access for patients especially when reports indicated that a particularly infectious strain had been driving what could be the worst flu season this winter.

Anil said “Running out of stock could have meant that patients had to wait longer for an appointment and potentially decide not to bother getting vaccinated. We wanted to ensure that did not happen at our pharmacies so we proactively used multiple suppliers for vaccines to mimimise stock disruption and ensured we could continue to provide vaccinations throughout the season”.

They forecasted demand for vaccination services

Anil and his team closely forecasted demand by looking at data from previous years and monitored this throughout the season.

“It was important to try to forecast demand for services and continue to monitor this throughout the season. Since the Childhood Flu Vaccination Service was new, we had no previous data so monitoring this month by month, helped us forecast demand.

The winter period is a particularly busy one with vaccination services, winter pressures and the Christmas period. By focusing on demand, this allowed us to adjust capacity accordingly throughout the season.”

They listened to feedback from patients

In general the feedback from vaccination services was high but some patients were keen to see expansion to vaccination services.

Anil said “We had high satisfaction with our vaccination services, especially the Childhood Flu Vaccination Service. However, we did have several parents/carers asking if we could vaccinate their older children as they’d missed their appointment at school. We had to advise that the service was unfortunately only for 2-3 year olds; expanding the service to provide a ‘mop-up’ element for older children who have missed their vaccination at school would seem like a helpful add-on to the service and once again help improve vaccination rates.”

Read more about the Childhood Flu Vaccination Service