Guidance

Workforce Recruitment and Retention Fund: examples of allowable activity

Updated 27 April 2022

Applies to England

Examples of allowable activity

This document sets out a range of tried and tested initiatives which other local authorities and care providers have successfully implemented to increase adult social care workforce capacity. 

This range of initiatives is for the purpose of providing illustrative examples. Use of the fund is not limited to this range so long as the conditions of the funding are met. 

We expect that local authorities will work closely with local care providers and care provider representatives to ensure a realistic assessment of the local labour market, workforce issues and the extent of staff absence.

Skills for Care’s area teams can support local authorities to set up staffing capacity measures and workforce planning. Local authorities should contact their Skills for Care area team using the contact details on the Skills for Care website. 

The care and health improvement programme led by the Local Government Association (LGA) and Association of Directors of Adult Services (ADASS) can also provide examples or more bespoke support to local authorities on how best to use the fund.

Local care provider associations may also be able to support the set-up of staffing capacity measures. A list of care provider associations can be found on the Care Association Alliance website (this is limited to members of the Care Association Alliance).

National care organisations may be able to connect local members to work more closely around these issues. See a full list of national organisations that work together as the Care Provider Alliance.

If appropriate, local authorities should work with their local resilience forum or clinical commissioning group (CCG) to identify additional sources of support.

The Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC’s) regional team can also provide support and guidance on models of best practice and on delivery of the fund.

Examples from the Workforce Capacity Fund

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

The Workforce Capacity Fund evaluation was published on 3 November 2021.

Learning can be taken from this previous fund to inform the implementation of recruitment and retention activities using the Workforce Recruitment and Retention Fund.

Examples of local authority and provider staffing initiatives

The below local authority-led initiatives have been collated through the LGA, Skills for Care and ADASS networks. Local authorities should note that the examples contained in this guidance are not an exhaustive list. The grant may be used to fund alternative approaches not specified within this document, including those delivered by care providers, on the condition that such measures generate sufficient adult social care workforce capacity where shortages arise due to winter pressures.

Examples below include:

• establishing or expanding local authority staff banks

• supporting administrative tasks so that more experienced and/or trained staff can focus on providing care

• redeployment of existing staff into new roles. This would cover local authority employed staff as well as staff from other services

• local recruitment initiatives

• funding new training costs for new recruits or to increase productivity of existing staff

• provisions for personal assistants

Other types of workforce capacity measures

As per this guidance and the Section 31 grant determination letter, local authorities can pass some or all the funding directly to Care Quality Commission (CQC)-registered care providers to allow them to implement measures that generate additional staffing capacity in the most effective way to address staff shortages.

Model	Example
Staff banks	Establishment or expansion of local authority staff banks.
Staff banks	A regional staff bank – workers may be prepared to work across multiple local authority areas. This could be linked to an app to help with logistics and notifications of vacancy and shift opportunities.
Staff banks	Where councils retained some funding they used it to build small banks of staff to support as an interim contingency measure alongside funding local recruitment campaigns, together with boosting resources to support system flow – for example, brokerage or sourcing and placement teams and capacity to assess or review and appropriately move along.
Staff banks	Keychange Charity established new ‘key worker’ job roles and outsourced recruitment and training to employ staff on short-term contracts who could then offer flexible support for any department within the care setting – such as in the kitchen, housekeeping or care. In this example, outsourcing the recruitment and training has meant that registered managers can focus on their other responsibilities, such as ensuring safe levels of care while maintaining responsibility for the final interview and decision.
Staff banks	In Hertfordshire, the local authority collaborated with Hertfordshire Care Provider Association to establish a bank of trained social care workers that local providers could employ either on a temporary or permanent basis. Since its creation, it has run as a 7-days-a-week, in-and-out-of-hours service for all care providers in Hertfordshire. A telephone line and dedicated email is staffed by a team of 12 staff, all of whom have specific knowledge of the sector, allowing them to support all types of providers. This approach has helped to both address vacancies and provide staffing solutions to care providers in emergency situations.
Staff banks	Local authority staff bank run by Thurrock Council, through which care workers are recruited, trained and Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checked. The staff bank offers fixed-term contracts, and a coordinator within the staff bank places staff into providers with shortages. And in Lancashire, the local authority set up the Lancashire Temporary Staffing Agency (LTSA) during the first wave of the pandemic. This was supplemented with a local recruitment campaign to recruit for care workers and other ancillary roles – for example, cleaners, caterers and drivers.
Staff banks	The Bradford Skills House and Casual Worker Pool also provides an example of how a staff bank can be used to recruit and train adult social care workers. In this model, bank staff are paid a higher rate of pay (£11.70 per hour) and this has helped to overcome local recruitment barriers. Providers can access the casual worker pool at a subsidised rate and deploy staff into their services. They reimburse the local authority the staff cost minus 20% which equates to the provider paying £9 per hour.
Staff banks	In Bradford, the local authority’s workforce programme has established a casual worker pool for care services for which new workers are led through their online training and offered 5 days of practical work experience within a council care service. And in Leeds, the city council run ‘We Care Academy’ which recruits people from underrepresented groups into the social care workforce. The academy offers a 2-week pre-employment training course covering theory and practical training as well as a week-long placement, with a guaranteed interview at the end.
Redeployment	Redeploy staff to take on the non-caring responsibilities of trained care staff such as managers to free up their capacity to provide direct care.
Redeployment	Move staff within settings who are familiar with the service and in administrative or ancillary roles to frontline care roles by providing the necessary training and supervision and backfilling the administrative roles via recruitment redeploying care staff from services experiencing less demand during the pandemic to services experiencing staffing shortages working collaboratively to identity care providers exiting the market and redeploying their staff into new roles with other care providers. This would involve the rapid support of staff at risk of redundancy to find an alternate suitable role within the sector that fills a capacity gap.
Redeployment	Suffolk County Council developed an upskilling programme for staff within their adult services to train them for redeployment into care services. This was a 3-stage virtual learning course covering bespoke training in key aspects of care that was tailored to the roles staff would be redeployed into. They complemented the training with shadowing opportunities and offered extended training for staff who would be redeployed for a longer period.
Redeployment	In Suffolk County Council’s ‘Preparing to Care’ programme, staff in their adult services team were trained to be redeployed into frontline care roles to provide reablement support. The local authority designed an upskilling programme tailored to the existing capability of local authority staff and the roles they would be redeployed into and were able to place staff into roles requiring differing level of skills and experience. Other redeployment schemes in Blackpool and Nottinghamshire have successfully redeployed existing staff into support roles such as cleaners, chefs, and drivers.
Redeployment or recruitment	Increasing the utility of existing staff by backfilling administrative tasks to free up direct contact time.
Incentives for additional hours	Enable care providers to alter shift patterns to allow for more flexible working patterns that increase the number of hours able to be worked by staff.
Incentives for additional hours	Access to e-scooters and e-cars to enable more calls to be made in domiciliary care.
Incentives for additional hours	Enable care providers to provide payment in lieu of annual leave in excess of the statutory minimum entitlement only, to increase the number of staff working during the period up to 31 March 2021.
Incentives for additional hours	Incentives for existing staff to take on additional hours if safe and appropriate to do so – for example, paying for childcare and overtime.
Retention	In Hertfordshire a collaboration with its Care Provider Association enabled them to set up daily emails to care providers to share essential information which helped build up a strong relationship to help give timely advice and support.
Retention	Local authorities and providers may want to consider loyalty bonuses as a retention method. The timing of any incentive payment would aim to encourage workforce retention over periods of high pressure.
Recruitment	Providers may want to consider running employee referral schemes. This could involve offering staff rewards for referring family and friends for jobs. Rewards could be offered at different stages of the recruitment process. For example, a reward for making an initial referral, and a reward if the referred individual starts a job. There are IT platforms that can support employers to run employee referral schemes.
Recruitment	At the end of June, Inspired to Care launched a recruitment advert with the aim of celebrating the amazing work of its diverse, skilled and passionate social care workforce and to inspire more people to join the sector. This is Inspired to Care’s largest ever recruitment marketing campaign for adult social care in Leicestershire.
Recruitment	Curado, an organisation based in South West London that runs an integrated clinical academic scheme, has recently been working with Kingston University on a project to encourage more men into social care. Curado will be developing a campaign (including podcasts, webinars and social media) to attract more men to the social care sector.
Recruitment	Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care System (ICS) in partnership with the CCG and Prince’s Trust have started a new pre-employment project to assist those considering a career in health or social care to gain knowledge and understanding about the sector for those aged 16 to 30. This project is part of the wider ‘We Can Do Together’ campaign.
Recruitment or retention	The Department for Work and Pensions in the Merseyside area has been offering free driving lessons, theory and tests for adult social care staff undertaking sector-based work academy programmes in the area.
Recruitment or staff banks	The Staffordshire and Stoke ICS has created a People Hub as a response to the pandemic. They now have over 1,200 staff ready to support a variety of sectors and settings, including care homes and primary care. Career conversations are currently being offered to help inform people’s career choices in the health and social care sector.
Recruitment	Proud to Care Cornwall is continuing its ‘Cornwall Needs You Now’ campaign to attract people into jobs within the sector. The campaign will have both local and national reach with tailored messaging for different audiences.
Recruitment	In the ‘We Care Academy’ in Leeds, which is a collaboration between the City Council and private, voluntary and independent sectors, end-to-end recruitment support was put in place to assess candidates, provide training and DBS checks and matching service for employers.
Recruitment	By collaborating closely with the local care provider market, Job Centre and the local authority adult education team, local authorities can identify where redundancies have or are being made so that those individuals can be targeted for roles where there are shortages within adult social care.
Recruitment	At provider level, Perthyn, a care provider in Northamptonshire, took multiple approaches to recruitment during the COVID-19 pandemic. This included using its own website, social media and other online platforms to promote and utilise its ‘recommend a friend service’ whereby the provider gave a £250 reward to the recommender when the candidate was recruited into its services. To save time and resource, Perthyn conducted telephone or video interviews, completed induction online, and offered eLearning while recruitment checks were completed. This approach was successful in recruiting both people with and without previous social care experience.
Recruitment or retention	Funding new training costs for new recruits or to increase productivity – that is, working hours of existing staff.
Recruitment or retention	Where local authorities are already using allowable activity approaches, the funding can be used to increase the scale of this activity.
Recruitment or redeployment	The grant may also be used to cover reasonable administrative and/or set up costs, capped at 1% of their total Workforce Recruitment and Retention Fund allocation, for measures that deliver additional workforce capacity for social care providers.
Recruitment	Working with specialist recruitment services to tailor marketing to fill specific workforce shortages.
Recruitment or retention	In the Isle of Wight, the local authority has worked with their learning development team to devise an intensive training course to be able to onboard staff with fast-track training core care skills. Free access to this and other care courses via the local authority’s learning and development platform have been enabled by the purchase of 400 licences. Courses available will include: - care certificate - coronavirus awareness - safeguarding - IPC - medication management - moving and handling people - food safety and hygiene level 2 - introduction to first aid - dignity and respect - health and safety basics and essentials These will be offered to independent sector providers and personal assistants.
Recruitment	Access technology to support recruitment processes.
Recruitment	Collaborate with local partners such as the voluntary sector and education partners to target particular groups for employment in social care.
Recruitment	Run targeted local recruitment campaigns, including social media campaigns.
Recruitment	Design a service that connects or matches applicants with employers – for example, matching applicants based on preferred service type and geographical preferences or by matching applicants to the most critical roles across services and providers in terms of demand.
Recruitment	Co-ordinate or fund support for potential future care staff to apply to care roles, by providing support with applications, training and conducting pre-employment checks.
Recruitment	Enable care providers to overstaff at pinch points to lessen the impact of any staff absences should they arise.
Recruitment	In Cheshire West and Chester local authority, a Council Redundancy Response portal was established to allow people facing redundancy or those who have recently been made redundant to upload their details and access instant support with finding a new role. This portal provides personalised support and links applicants up with vacancies in social care.
Recruitment	‘Golden hellos’.

Key considerations

1. Where care home providers are deploying bank staff in their services, they should continue to follow the latest guidance on workforce movement between care homes and other care settings.

2. Local authorities should consider their options for making available re-deployed staff from within the local authority, or from independent care providers who may have capacity and are able to collaborate, into other roles or settings to best meet workforce demand.  

3. When implementing staffing capacity measures such as redeployment, care providers must ensure that they are operating within the margins of their indemnity insurance, checking with insurance providers where necessary that existing indemnity and insurance arrangements for employer and public liability are adequate to cover redeployed workers. Whoever is directing the work of the worker, usually the receiving employer, will be responsible for ensuring there is an appropriate indemnity in place. The local authority may wish to consider the use of mutual aid agreements with appropriate documentation to facilitate redeployment.

4. Local authorities and providers should utilise the Skills for Care resources on recruitment solutions.

5. Local authorities and providers should consider how they can best support the mental health and wellbeing of existing care staff to ensure they are supported in carrying out their roles and the workforce is able to be used to its maximum capacity. The government has worked alongside the NHS and other organisations to provide a package of emotional, psychological and practical resources for the workforce. This package includes support helplines, guidance, bereavement resources and webinars for registered managers. To make it easier for employers and staff to locate relevant resources, we have also supported Skills for Care in developing the online Workforce wellbeing resource finder.

6. It may also be helpful for care providers to note that the Working Time Regulations 1998 were amended in March 2020 to enable workers to carry forward their statutory leave into their next 2 leave years where it is not reasonably practicable for a worker to take some or all their leave as a result of the effects of coronavirus.

7. Local authorities and care providers may wish to consider potential barriers to care staff taking on additional hours. One of these may be the impact of staff working extra hours on benefit entitlement and passported benefits to other support schemes such as free school meals. The impact of increasing weekly hours on the benefit entitlement of care staff will vary depending on individual circumstance. However, as a result of the flexibilities in the system such as the work allowance in Universal Credit and the income disregard in Tax Credits, many are likely to experience an increase in total income by taking on additional paid hours. The government has guidance where claimants can find more information about interactions between income and their benefits.

8. Local authorities should consider whether there are trained individuals who have been made redundant from care providers which have exited the market and so would be able to transition quickly into a new care setting. However, there may also be individuals without care experience who have recently been made redundant and may require support applying to the care sector and training, which the local authority could use this funding to help coordinate.

Volunteering induction trainers guide – community skills (skillsforcare.org.uk)

Free resources to support recruitment and redeployment

Local authorities and social care providers are reminded that the Home Office and DBS have put temporary arrangements in place to allow remote ID and Right to Work Checks, free-of-charge standard and enhanced DBS checks and fast-track Barred List checks for COVID-19 related recruitment. Employers can choose to appoint staff based on a satisfactory Barred List check while waiting for the full DBS check, if waiting would cause undue delay.

This offer applies to healthcare and social care workers in England and Wales, being recruited in connection with the provision of care and treatment of coronavirus, or those being recruited to backfill roles because of the impact of the pandemic.

See COVID-19: free-of-charge DBS applications and fast-track Barred List check service.

See also interim guidance by CQC on the temporary arrangements.

Additionally, the department is continuing to offer rapid online induction training to help induct and train redeployed staff, new starters, existing staff and new volunteers in social care services. This training is provided free of charge when accessed through Skills for Care.

Other support from the department

In order to attract more people to the care sector the department ran a national recruitment campaign  across broadcast, digital and social media. The next phase of the campaign was launched on 3 November 2021 and runs through to March 2022. Advertising will run across radio, video on demand and digital channels, with high profile bursts of TV advertising in November and January. Activity will maximise visibility of job opportunities and raise the profile of the care sector as a rewarding and stimulating place to work.

In 2020 to 2021, the department provided £26.3 million funding to Skills for Care to deliver strategic social care workforce priorities, and we are continuing to fund this activity in 2021 to 2022. This includes:

• the Workforce Development Fund (WDF), which provides social care employers with funding to contribute to the costs of the continuing professional development of the adult social care workforce

• rapid response training as part of the WDF, providing induction training to support employers to recruit through the pandemic

• supporting registered managers (including additional support though COVID-19)

• activity to support the department’s recruitment and retention ambitions, such as supporting our national recruitment campaign and working with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to promote adult social care careers to job seekers

However, we are aware of the pressures currently facing the sector as a result of increased workforce capacity pressures and are working with local authorities and providers to ensure we are doing everything we can to support care services during this challenging period.

Annex A: supporting resources

• Further case studies

Recruitment resources

• Workforce commissioning (for local authorities)

• Workforce capacity planning (for local authorities)

• Workforce planning (for providers)

• Measuring workforce outcomes (for local authorities and providers)

• Workforce productivity (for local authorities and providers)

• People performance management kit (for local authorities and providers)

• Guidance: safe and rapid recruitment

• Signposting to resources

• Case studies for recruitment

• National recruitment campaign resources

• Employee referral programme

• Rapid induction training