Adult social care given over £250 million extra to continue coronavirus (COVID-19) protections
People in care homes or those being cared for at home will benefit from an extra £250 million to continue to protect them from COVID-19 transmission.
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Over a quarter of a billion has been given to extend adult social care coronavirus (COVID-19) support beyond June.
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Funds will boost Infection Control Fund and vital COVID-19 testing.
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It brings the total specific funding for the sector to over £2 billion.
Made up of £142.5 million Infection Control Funding and £108.8 million for testing, the fund will help protect people in adult social care by continuing to meet the cost of rigorous infection prevention and control measures, as restrictions in wider society are eased, and supporting rapid, regular testing of staff to prevent COVID-19 transmission.
This funding brings the total funding given specifically to social care to £2 billion throughout the pandemic to help support the sector and keep people safe. This is on top of prioritising the sector for vaccines, providing regular, rapid testing to care homes and bringing in regulations to make vaccines a condition of deployment in care homes.
Minister for Care Helen Whately said:
We are keeping up our support for social care through the pandemic. This new funding will help care services continue to protect those they look after and their staff from this cruel virus.
It brings our total support to social care to £2 billion during the pandemic, along with billions of items of free PPE, over 120 million tests and the prioritisation of social care in the vaccination programme.
The new money will be a continuation of Infection Control and Testing Fund, which was due to run until the end of the month and will now last until the end of September.
Infection Control Funding is used by care homes and home care providers to keep their staff and residents safe. It can be used to:
- ensure staff who are isolating receive their normal wages while doing so
- ensure that members of staff work in only one care home where possible
- limit or cohort staff to individual groups of residents or floors/wings, for example paying for extra staff cover to provide the necessary level of care and support to residents
- support recruitment of additional staff (and volunteers) if they’re needed to enable staff to work in only one care home
Professor Martin Green OBE, Chief Executive, Care England said:
The extension of the ICF and Testing Fund is very welcome and we applaud the DHSC in securing this extension. The adult social care provider sector has worked extremely hard to continue to protect the people it supports and cares for through extensive infection control and testing procedures. This funding is a recognition of these efforts.
Care England is happy to work at speed to ensure the successful roll out of the money to the front line where it is most needed and where providers have been anxiously waiting for news.
Testing funding will continue to support providers with the costs associated with ongoing testing in care settings. This includes funding to support visitor testing to ensure residents can see their loved ones as safely as possible.
Throughout the pandemic the government has sought to protect everyone working in the social care sector or receiving social care, particularly given the increased risk people in these settings face.
Free PPE is provided to the care sector until March 2022 and to date, more than 35 million PCR swab test kits and 85 million LFDs have been sent to care homes.
Over £2 billion has now been given to the sector including infection prevention and control measures and prioritised the sector for the vaccine.
Background information
We will publish detailed grant determination in the coming days.
More details on the Infection Control Fund are available.
The government had published toolkits through Skills for Care to reinforce infection prevention and control procedures among staff and visitors to care homes:
- Infection prevention and control and Every action counts toolkit: Skillsforcare.org.uk