Guidance

Accelerating Reform Fund for adult social care: guidance for local authorities

Updated 21 December 2023

Applies to England

Introduction

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is launching the Accelerating Reform Fund (ARF), which provides a total of £42.6 million in grant funding over 2023 to 2024 (£20 million) and 2024 to 2025 (£22.6 million), to support innovation in adult social care.

While the care sector has been innovating for decades, sometimes impactful innovations can remain on the margins, rather than becoming the mainstream way of delivering care and support. Through the ARF, the department wants to support the growth of services that make person-centred care a reality for those who draw on it, support unpaid carers to live healthy and fulfilling lives alongside their caring role and respond to rising demand and the changing needs of local populations. Collaboration and communication are vital to embedding and sustaining innovations. The ARF is designed to promote partnership working across local areas, as well as sharing of learning and best practice nationally.

Aim

The aim of the ARF is to address barriers to adopting innovative practices and build capacity and capability in adult social care.

The Minister of State for Care has written to all local authorities to set out the department’s priorities for innovation and scaling. These 12 priorities cover a broad range of areas under the 3 objectives of our 10-year vision for adult social care reform.

The aim of the ARF is to support the adoption or scaling of projects that deliver these priorities. In order to participate, we are asking local authorities to form consortia with other local authorities in their integrated care system (ICS) geography. Then, working together with the NHS and other partners, consortia should select 2 or more projects, with at least one project focused on an unpaid carer option (the priorities which are focused on unpaid carers are noted below), to scale using this funding. The aim of the grant is to kick-start development of projects that can be further supported through existing local authority funding.

Priorities

Priority 1: community-based care models such as shared living arrangements

Priority 2: supporting people to have greater control over their care options, such as by using digital tools to self-direct support or communicate needs and preferences

Priority 3: investment in local area networks or communities to support prevention and promote wellbeing, enabling people to age well in their communities

Priority 4 (focusses on unpaid carers): ways to support unpaid carers to have breaks which are tailored to their needs

Priority 5: digital tools to support workforce recruitment and retention, for example through referral schemes

Priority 6: develop and expand the impact of local volunteer-supported pathways for people drawing on care and support

Priority 7 (focusses on unpaid carers): ways to conduct effective carer’s assessments with a focus on measuring outcomes and collaboration

Priority 8 (focusses on unpaid carers): services that reach out to, and involve, unpaid carers through the discharge process

Priority 9: digital workforce development and market shaping tools with capability to map, strengthen and grow local workforce capacity relative to system demand

Priority 10: social prescribing to connect people with information, advice, activities and services in the community

Priority 11 (focusses on unpaid carers): ways to better identify unpaid carers in local areas

Priority 12 (focusses on unpaid carers): ways to encourage people to recognise themselves as carers and promote access to carer services

Working in partnership with health partners, care providers, and voluntary and community groups will be essential to designing effective projects. You should also consider co-production with people drawing on care and/or unpaid carers and how projects reflect the diverse needs of your local populations.

Unpaid carers

As part of our ‘10-year vision for adult social care reform’ and Next steps to put People at the Heart of Care) we committed to kick-starting a change in the services provided for unpaid carers.

The ARF is provided to consortia with the purpose to develop at least one project that focusses on services for unpaid carers – priorities 4, 7, 8, 11 and 12 from the list above.  

While other interventions are also expected to be designed with consideration to unpaid carers, we would like to see at least one project from each consortium that falls within these 5 categories dedicated to supporting unpaid carers.

Process

Forming a consortium

The grant will be paid under section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003 to the lead local authority chosen to receive the grant on behalf of their consortium of local authorities in each ICS area.

There should be only one consortium per ICS area which should consist of all local authorities within that ICS that wish to opt in to the fund. Local authorities that span multiple ICSs can choose which consortium they wish to join, should they choose to opt in to the fund. Local authorities may join only one consortium. Once the lead local authority has received the funding allocation, it can be distributed across the consortium as required.

Where it makes sense for the population being served or for the provision of services, 2 ICS consortia can submit a joint EOI outlining one lead local authority. A joint EOI should also include all local authorities within the 2 ICSs that wish to opt into the fund.

Each consortium is advised to also involve health partners, care providers, and voluntary and community groups in developing and delivering projects.

Expression of interest (EOI) form

Once you have worked within your consortium to appoint a lead local authority and agree the projects to take forward, you will be required to submit an expression of interest (EOI) form to the department.

The EOI form is light-touch so that completing it can be as quick and simple as possible. The form asks for an overview of your plans, including:

• summary of the proposed projects
• project governance structure
• project delivery and milestones
• which partners (care providers, NHS and voluntary and community groups and ICS partners) have been involved in developing the proposal
• the biggest challenges to delivery and what kinds of support would help to overcome these
• the key outputs and how you will measure the success of your project
• the post-grant sustainability or lasting impact of projects

Complete your expression of interest form

If you require an alternative format, email ascinnovationimprovementunit@dhsc.gov.uk.

Eligibility

The fund is not competitive, and each consortium will receive an allocation of funding if the EOI form is submitted on time complete with the necessary information.

As noted, there can be only one consortium of local authorities per ICS area and consortia are expected to involve care providers, community partners and health organisations.

Funding distribution approach

The grant is intended to be initial funding to cover some start-up and ongoing programme costs and we are therefore proposing the following approach to funding.

A £300,000 ‘floor’ per ICS consortium is intended to cover some core project start-up costs and will be provided in full in the first year.

Top-up funding, totalling £30 million for all local authorities in England, is intended to cover some programme costs and will be calculated based on the adult social care Relative Needs Formula (RNF) at a local authority level and summed to the ICS at a consortium level. This will be calculated based on the total number of local authorities opting in to the consortium. For local authorities that span multiple ICS areas, their RNF funding allocation will be added to the consortium they choose to join. 

If local authorities choose not to opt in to the fund, we intend for most or all of their RNF funding allocation to be redistributed among all ICS consortia across the country, based on the adult social care RNF, following a consistent approach as described above. 

Following the deadline of 12 January 2024, DHSC will confirm final allocations for each consortium. Allocations will not differ according to the number of projects taken forward.

Information on the mapping of ICS areas is available on the NHS page under ‘ICB partner organisations’.

The first payment will be made in March 2024 for 2023 to 2024 with a further payment to be made in 2024 to 2025. The second tranche of grant payments in 2024 to 2025 will be conditional on completion of mid grant reporting.

SCIE support

The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) is available to provide practical support to your area. For example, they can offer support with:

• identifying priority issues and selecting which innovations to embed or scale
• identifying challenges and opportunities for scaling
• development of your expressions of interest (EOI)
• collating reporting and capturing project progress, outputs and outcomes
• facilitating peer learning, sharing and support

To find out more, contact SCIE at innovation@scie.org.uk.

SCIE will also provide support to consortia through a series of roundtables. The roundtables will help identify challenges and opportunities, share learning, and facilitate peer support.

Memorandum of Understanding

Once your expression of interest has been approved, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) will be agreed with the lead local authority of each consortium. The MOU will include the final funding allocation for your consortium and set out expectations for how the consortium will work with DHSC, the evaluation partner and the support partner (SCIE).

Some of the key expectations will include:

• grant funding should only be used towards the projects described at EOI. Any changes to proposals should be aligned to the criteria for accessing the grant and DHSC should be notified
• consortia will work with DHSC and any other third parties (for example, the support or evaluation partner) to provide the necessary information and data to enable monitoring and evaluation
• consortia will work with the evaluation partner to support the evaluation
• consortia will report to DHSC and/or an evaluation partner. This will include evidence of how successfully the project has been delivered and a summary of the impact of this implementation
• consortia will be expected to co-operate with DHSC and/or third parties (for example, the support or evaluation partner) to share necessary information, data and/or learnings with other consortia regarding the delivery of the project and lessons learned
• DHSC will monitor grant expenditure through mid and end grant reporting
• payment of the second tranche of funding will be conditional on completion of mid grant reporting
• consortia shall provide DHSC with a royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable licence to use the background intellectual property rights where it is used for the purposes of the project

The MOU will be agreed with each lead local authority before funding is received.

Reporting

As above, the department and/or evaluation partner will collect mid and end grant reports which will include grant expenditure.

To support learning and the sustainability of your projects, we encourage consortia to undertake their own assessment of the perceived impact of each proposal. The national evaluation partner and SCIE will be available to support this. The national evaluation partner may also request additional reporting, such as information from individual project assessments, but they can work with you to agree the approach and ensure requests are feasible.

The end grant report will include a post-grant sustainability plan identifying how projects and innovations will be supported, further scaled or learned from in future.

The lead local authority should submit a final statement of grant expenditure by 21 April 2025.

Evaluation

A national evaluation partner will be commissioned to undertake a process evaluation of the programme, including:

• an assessment of current barriers to scaling innovations, including where and how the programme has supported areas to overcome these
• evaluation of the SCIE support offer, including the implementation as well as the support it provided to local areas to overcome barriers to scaling
• collating the local assessments of impact of innovations. The evaluator may also consider potential ways to support areas to continue to deliver and scale up innovations post-delivery of the grant

Alongside SCIE, DHSC will work to provide robust analytical advice on your own assessments of impact of individual innovations, likely through the national evaluation partner.

Timeline

EOI opens: 24 October 2023

SCIE webinar on EOI: 14 November 2023

SCIE webinar on EOI: 27 November 2023

Deadline for return of EOIs: 12 January 2024

Final funding amounts confirmed: 9 February 2024

MOUs agreed and signed: 16 February 2024

Find out how to register for the webinars on the SCIE website

Local authority indicative allocations

The table below shows the indicative local authority top-up allocations to the relevant consortium that local authorities join. This assumes that all local authorities participate in the Accelerating Reform Fund and all integrated care systems have a consortium.

These allocations may be interpreted as the minimum top-up funding a local authority brings to the consortium when it joins that consortium.

The top-up funding is additional to the floor of £300,000 per consortium.

If local authorities choose not to opt into the fund, we intend for most or all of their RNF funding allocation to be redistributed among all ICS consortia across the country.

DHSC will confirm the final allocation for each consortium following the expression of interest submission deadline.

Local Authority (LA) name	2023 to 2024 indicative LA level top-ups to consortium funding - assuming all LAs participate and all ICS have a consortium (excluding consortium floor funding)	2024 to 2025 indicative LA level top-ups to consortium funding - assuming all LAs participate and all ICS have a consortium (excluding consortium floor funding)	2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025 indicative LA level top-ups to consortium funding - assuming all LAs participate and all ICS have a consortium (excluding consortium floor funding)
Barking and Dagenham	£28,153	£85,980	£114,133
Barnet	£44,631	£136,305	£180,936
Barnsley	£38,184	£116,616	£154,800
Bath and North East Somerset	£22,501	£68,718	£91,219
Bedford	£19,142	£58,460	£77,602
Bexley	£28,625	£87,422	£116,047
Birmingham	£172,676	£527,361	£700,037
Blackburn with Darwen	£23,570	£71,983	£95,553
Blackpool	£27,864	£85,097	£112,961
Bolton	£42,861	£130,901	£173,762
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole	£53,955	£164,782	£218,737
Bracknell Forest	£11,157	£34,073	£45,230
Bradford	£70,831	£216,321	£287,152
Brent	£41,410	£126,469	£167,879
Brighton and Hove	£37,884	£115,699	£153,583
Bristol, City of	£62,541	£191,004	£253,545
Bromley	£36,706	£112,101	£148,807
Buckinghamshire	£51,532	£157,382	£208,914
Bury	£25,182	£76,907	£102,089
Calderdale	£28,386	£86,691	£115,077
Cambridgeshire	£71,658	£218,849	£290,507
Camden	£39,644	£121,076	£160,720
Central Bedfordshire	£26,701	£81,546	£108,247
Cheshire East	£44,728	£136,602	£181,330
Cheshire West and Chester	£45,239	£138,163	£183,402
City of London	£1,504	£4,594	£6,098
Cornwall	£86,129	£263,044	£349,173
County Durham	£87,023	£265,774	£352,797
Coventry	£47,824	£146,058	£193,882
Croydon	£43,208	£131,959	£175,167
Cumberland	£42,035	£128,376	£170,411
Darlington	£15,453	£47,194	£62,647
Derby	£35,414	£108,157	£143,571
Derbyshire	£111,842	£341,571	£453,413
Devon	£110,246	£336,696	£446,942
Doncaster	£46,555	£142,180	£188,735
Dorset	£52,625	£160,719	£213,344
Dudley	£48,150	£147,053	£195,203
Ealing	£43,708	£133,488	£177,196
East Riding of Yorkshire	£44,584	£136,162	£180,746
East Sussex	£79,724	£243,482	£323,206
Enfield	£40,041	£122,288	£162,329
Essex	£182,518	£557,419	£739,937
Gateshead	£34,943	£106,718	£141,661
Gloucestershire	£78,008	£238,240	£316,248
Greenwich	£41,017	£125,268	£166,285
Hackney	£43,321	£132,304	£175,625
Halton	£19,707	£60,185	£79,892
Hammersmith and Fulham	£28,317	£86,481	£114,798
Hampshire	£146,597	£447,715	£594,312
Haringey	£35,403	£108,122	£143,525
Harrow	£29,903	£91,326	£121,229
Hartlepool	£15,451	£47,189	£62,640
Havering	£31,009	£94,702	£125,711
Herefordshire, County of	£27,152	£82,924	£110,076
Hertfordshire	£127,478	£389,324	£516,802
Hillingdon	£32,101	£98,038	£130,139
Hounslow	£30,813	£94,105	£124,918
Isle of Wight	£23,631	£72,171	£95,802
Isles of Scilly	£390	£1,198	£1,588
Islington	£39,648	£121,088	£160,736
Kensington and Chelsea	£26,727	£81,624	£108,351
Kent	£190,065	£580,484	£770,549
Kingston upon Hull, City of	£44,799	£136,819	£181,618
Kingston upon Thames	£17,673	£53,974	£71,647
Kirklees	£57,346	£175,139	£232,485
Knowsley	£30,126	£92,006	£122,132
Lambeth	£46,525	£142,090	£188,615
Lancashire	£170,143	£519,626	£689,769
Leeds	£102,081	£311,760	£413,841
Leicester	£48,524	£148,194	£196,718
Leicestershire	£74,439	£227,342	£301,781
Lewisham	£42,176	£128,809	£170,985
Lincolnshire	£103,845	£317,149	£420,994
Liverpool	£91,177	£278,461	£369,638
Luton	£24,301	£74,215	£98,516
Manchester	£82,203	£251,053	£333,256
Medway	£30,768	£93,966	£124,734
Merton	£23,061	£70,428	£93,489
Middlesbrough	£23,370	£71,372	£94,742
Milton Keynes	£27,999	£85,511	£113,510
Newcastle upon Tyne	£46,276	£141,328	£187,604
Newham	£45,276	£138,276	£183,552
Norfolk	£128,843	£393,492	£522,335
North East Lincolnshire	£24,041	£73,423	£97,464
North Lincolnshire	£23,462	£71,653	£95,115
North Northamptonshire	£38,915	£118,847	£157,762
North Somerset	£28,488	£87,005	£115,493
North Tyneside	£31,792	£97,093	£128,885
North Yorkshire	£74,728	£228,222	£302,950
Northumberland	£46,911	£143,270	£190,181
Nottingham	£47,793	£145,961	£193,754
Nottinghamshire	£108,751	£332,132	£440,883
Oldham	£34,606	£105,688	£140,294
Oxfordshire	£70,656	£215,788	£286,444
Peterborough	£24,471	£74,736	£99,207
Plymouth	£39,593	£120,920	£160,513
Portsmouth	£27,455	£83,848	£111,303
Reading	£17,560	£53,628	£71,188
Redbridge	£34,409	£105,088	£139,497
Redcar and Cleveland	£22,207	£67,821	£90,028
Richmond upon Thames	£20,376	£62,229	£82,605
Rochdale	£34,174	£104,370	£138,544
Rotherham	£41,480	£126,681	£168,161
Rutland	£4,185	£12,780	£16,965
Salford	£40,628	£124,080	£164,708
Sandwell	£56,978	£174,013	£230,991
Sefton	£47,017	£143,593	£190,610
Sheffield	£83,412	£254,746	£338,158
Shropshire	£42,976	£131,252	£174,228
Slough	£15,893	£48,538	£64,431
Solihull	£26,836	£81,959	£108,795
Somerset	£77,008	£235,188	£312,196
South Gloucestershire	£28,831	£88,050	£116,881
South Tyneside	£28,221	£86,187	£114,408
Southampton	£34,206	£104,467	£138,673
Southend-on-Sea	£25,407	£77,593	£103,000
Southwark	£48,428	£147,903	£196,331
St. Helens	£29,688	£90,669	£120,357
Staffordshire	£109,211	£333,535	£442,746
Stockport	£39,566	£120,836	£160,402
Stockton-on-Tees	£26,062	£79,593	£105,655
Stoke-on-Trent	£41,067	£125,420	£166,487
Suffolk	£100,560	£307,115	£407,675
Sunderland	£48,340	£147,632	£195,972
Surrey	£123,168	£376,162	£499,330
Sutton	£22,733	£69,427	£92,160
Swindon	£23,719	£72,438	£96,157
Tameside	£35,583	£108,672	£144,255
Telford and Wrekin	£23,874	£72,912	£96,786
Thurrock	£20,171	£61,604	£81,775
Torbay	£25,548	£78,025	£103,573
Tower Hamlets	£45,170	£137,951	£183,121
Trafford	£29,159	£89,054	£118,213
Wakefield	£50,840	£155,269	£206,109
Walsall	£44,148	£134,830	£178,978
Waltham Forest	£33,568	£102,518	£136,086
Wandsworth	£40,005	£122,177	£162,182
Warrington	£25,399	£77,569	£102,968
Warwickshire	£68,900	£210,423	£279,323
West Berkshire	£15,444	£47,168	£62,612
West Northamptonshire	£44,863	£137,014	£181,877
West Sussex	£101,856	£311,075	£412,931
Westminster	£40,797	£124,597	£165,394
Westmorland and Furness	£35,271	£107,721	£142,992
Wigan	£49,094	£149,934	£199,028
Wiltshire	£56,211	£171,672	£227,883
Windsor and Maidenhead	£14,691	£44,866	£59,557
Wirral	£55,511	£169,535	£225,046
Wokingham	£12,382	£37,816	£50,198
Wolverhampton	£42,441	£129,618	£172,059
Worcestershire	£73,526	£224,552	£298,078
York	£22,564	£68,911	£91,475
LA level total (excluding ICB floor funding)	£7,400,000	£22,600,000	£30,000,000