Guidance

Workforce Capacity Fund: outcomes and findings, October 2021

Updated 3 November 2021

Applies to England

Overview

The Workforce Capacity Fund (WCF) was a £120 million fund introduced by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for the adult social care (ASC) sector to supplement and strengthen staff capacity to meet critical staffing shortages caused by coronavirus (COVID-19). This fund was part of a wider package of support put in place by the government to support the sector during the pandemic.

In addition to maintaining care provision and the continuity of care, measures could support restrictions of staff movement between care homes and other care settings, as well as enabling safe and timely hospital discharges to care environments for those in receipt of care. This ring-fenced grant for ASC was available to be spent on activities to strengthen capacity between 16 January and 31 March 2021.

Note on the data

There were 3 reporting points for the WCF (12 February, 5 March and 17 May 2021), with local authorities having until 8 October to let us know of any additions or changes to their monitoring data. Data had been received from all 151 local authorities but outputs data (that is, the number of additional hours and new recruits generated with the fund) was missing for one.

It should be noted that the monitoring data was self-reported by local authorities, and, with the exception of reviewing the returns to ensure eligibility of the funding, the accuracy of the data has not been verified. Due to the potential impact of other funds or interventions on outputs, the data presented here could overestimate the outputs delivered specifically by the WCF. In some cases, there was variation in how local authorities interpreted the form and the way in which they reported spending and outputs delivered. Further detail on the WCF data, as reported by local authorities (and including the information below), is available on the data on spend and outputs page.

DHSC conducted an online survey of 59 participating local authorities between 13 July and 10 August 2021. The survey asked a range of closed and free text questions on local authorities’ experiences of planning for, and spending the WCF, and the impact of the fund on workforce capacity. Further feedback was gained from workshops and ad hoc feedback from the sector.

Key outcomes from the WCF

A total of 7.3 million additional hours of work were generated by the WCF:

• just 1,210,349 (17%) of this was generated by direct local authority spend, with 6,103,075 (83%) by passported (or provider-led) spend
• the top 3 activity types for generating hours included:
  • other* (provider-led)
  • staff bank (provider-led)
  • recruitment support (provider-led)

A total of 39,047 new recruits to the sector were generated by the WCF:

• 3,802 of this was generated by direct local authority spend, with 35,245 by passported (or provider-led) spend.
• the top 3 activity types for generating jobs included:
  • other* (provider-led)
  • recruitment support (provider-led)
  • staff bank (provider-led)

While ‘additional hours’ include those delivered by both existing and new recruits, the total is the equivalent of approximately 19,766 full-time equivalents over the funding period (assuming a 37-hour working week and a 10-week funding period).

71% (or £84.7 million) of total utilised funding was passed directly to providers, with many local authorities passporting the majority of their allocations.

£7.7 million of the WCF was recorded as unspent, representing 6% of the £120 million fund.

* The ‘other’ category for both local authority-led and provider-led activity included initiatives such as purchasing additional capacity, overtime and incentives for working additional hours, use of technology, holiday buy-back schemes, childcare and transport costs, wellbeing support, and training for staff.

What worked well on the WCF

The WCF helped support staffing capacity over winter 2020 to 2021:

• 44 (75%) of local authority survey respondents agreed that the WCF was either ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ effective in supporting them to strengthen workforce capacity
• 76% of local authorities ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that the WCF helped to maintain safe staffing levels from mid-January to 31 March 2021
• 64% of local authorities ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that the WCF had a positive impact on the capacity of the ASC workforce in the local authority

The WCF supported reducing staff movement between care homes and other health or care settings:

• 64% of local authorities ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that the WCF helped to reduce staff movement between care homes and other health and care settings

The mix of eligible activities worked to support local authorities and providers to tailor support to their local circumstances and opportunities. There was a wide distribution of funding across the range of eligible activities. A large proportion of the 59 local authorities who responded to the survey reported funding measures including:

• overtime and other incentives to support additional hours (93%)
• recruitment support initiatives (83%)
• engaging agencies and other temporary staffing (78%)
• emergency support measures (76%)
• recruitment campaigns (advertising) (76%)

The listed activities which were least reported as funded by survey respondents were employee retention incentives and bonus payments for staff – but both were still funded by just under half of local authorities who responded (44%).

What did not work so well on the WCF

Local authorities and the sector reported that they needed more time to prepare to receive and then disperse the funding – and that this was a key driver in the level of unspent monies reported.

This issue was a key strand of feedback on the WCF, having been consistently raised by the sector in correspondence with the department (including from local authorities managing their funding) in our regular stakeholder forums and in roundtable sessions held to gain feedback on the fund.

This was also reflected in the responses from local authorities to our survey. Of the 59 authorities who responded:

• 98% ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that they needed more time to make plans between the announcement of the WCF and receiving funding
• 97% ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that they needed more time to engage providers between the announcement of the WCF and receiving funding
• 98% ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that they needed more time to engage relevant stakeholders between the announcement of the WCF and receiving funding

In terms of the factors which would have better supported local authorities to fully spend their grant allocations, the 59 survey respondents most frequently reported the following:

• having more time to assess areas of need (51%)
• having more time to spend the fund (49%)
• having more time or more support for smaller providers and sector partners (44%)

The WCF supported short-term stabilisation of staffing capacity in social care but was less successful in creating longer-term capacity benefits – partly because measures which were more likely to have longer-term impacts (such as recruitment) were often challenging to establish in the time frame for using the funding.

54% of local authorities agreed the WCF has had some positive impact on staffing capacity since the end of the fund (31 March) – notably lower than the 76% who agreed WCF helped to maintain safe staffing levels from mid-January to 31 March 2021.

Local authorities also told us that the reporting requirements for the WCF incurred a high administrative burden – and that this acted as a disincentive for effective use of the funding.

Of the 59 local authorities who responded:

• only 19% ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that the reporting requirements and timescales were proportionate to the amount of funding and the grant conditions
• only 8% ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that the reporting requirements for the WCF were easy to manage alongside reporting requirements for other government funding

Feedback in workshops with local authority representatives highlighted that the frequency of reporting points (which took place on 12 February, 5 March and 17 May 2021) and the amount of data required was not proportionate to the size or length of the fund. In fact, some authorities said the high burden of reporting acted as a disincentive to providers in taking up the offer of additional funding.

Some local authorities flagged that they felt the WCF had too restrictive grant conditions – though we have limited information on what additional activities they would have liked to have been eligible.

37% of local authorities felt that the grant conditions were not open enough for them to tailor activities to their requirements. Specific to the monitoring information we required from local authorities, the majority of survey respondents (59%) felt that it was clear what information they needed to collect and report on the fund. However, only 22 authorities (37%) felt they were able to easily monitor how passported funds were being spent.

How the WCF has informed the WRRF

In line with the feedback we have gained from this process, we are undertaking to make the following improvements to support future funding streams, notably the Workforce Recruitment and Retention Fund (WRRF).

Timescales

To allow local authorities more time for better planning and utilisation of funding, the WRRF has been developed to span over an extended period of time, lasting between 21 October 2021 and 31 March 2022.

Reporting requirements

We will develop a more proportionate reporting framework for the WRRF, that balances the administrative burden on local authorities and care providers from this and other COVID-19-related funding, with the need for grant assurance and for purposes of evaluation. We will also include case studies and examples of best practice from the Workforce Capacity Fund.

Guidance

To support the sector to maximise the productivity of the funding, we will be publishing further guidance for the WRRF which will detail case studies and examples of allowable activity under the grant.

Distributing the grant via local authorities

As with the Workforce Capacity Fund, we intend to distribute the Workforce Recruitment and Retention Fund via local authorities, as they are well placed to identify pressure points in their local systems and will be able to encourage collaborative working across their geographical area.

To allow for better planning, impact and collaboration within local authority areas, we have extended the period of the funding than was available through the WCF. We will strongly encourage local authorities to work closely with care providers and other local partners to ensure the WRRF is used to best effect, including passporting funding to care providers as appropriate, and subject to grant conditions.

It is important to acknowledge that workforce capacity pressures are different now compared to those between January and March 2021. Therefore, local authorities and providers may wish to spend their WRRF allocations on different forms of allowable activity than they did with the WCF.