Yesterday, my colleagues in DHSC have announced an extra £250 million have been made available to adult social care services to meet the costs of infection control and testing so they can continue to protect those they look after and their staff from the virus.
This additional £250 million has been provided through our Infection Control and Testing Fund to help care homes and providers meet the costs of implementing infection prevention measures and testing until the end of September – bringing the Government's total support for social care to £2 billion.
Specifically, the 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
Additionally, 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.
By giving our social care the resources and funding it needs to control the virus, we can continue to protect staff and residents while allowing our care homes to deliver world-class care.