Financial support for adult social care providers and carers

11 November update - infection control monthly reporting for round 2

You can now submit your Infection Control Fund (ICF) spending monthly return for round two.

Deadline dates for returns:

For October return - 18 November
For November return - 21 December
For December return - 22 January
For January return - 19 February
For February return - 24 March
For March return - 23 April

26 October 2020 update

The government announced that there will be a further round of Infection Control fund monies to support care providers from October to March 2021. Guidance on Infection Control Fund: round 2 can be found here.

The ICF is again being paid to local authorities over two equal instalments, for Norfolk this is a payment of £5.2m in each payment. The grant itself is split into:

80% share – to be passed to care homes and community care providers
20% share – for distribution by local authorities to support the care sector to put in place other COVID-19 infection control measures allocated at their discretion

80% share

The first instalment has been received by the Norfolk County Council and has been passed on to those providers, within the 80% share, who have met the criteria for grant conditions. This includes providers who have completed the National Tracker (care homes) or the CQC Homecare survey (community care providers). The first payment date is 28 October.

For those providers who haven’t yet completed the grant agreement form, the deadline for returning these has been extended until 9 November.

The grant can be used to fund Infection Control measures between 1 October 2020 and 31 March 2021. Find out more information on the Infection Control measures.

The second instalment is likely to be received and paid out to providers in December 2020. To receive the second instalment providers will need to be continuing to meet the grant conditions as set out in the national guidance.

20% share for local distribution - updated 16 December 2020

The proposals for the distribution of the 20% have now been approved following development in conjunction with NorCA. These proposals are that:

Some of the funding is used to support Day Services to resume and/or extend their services. An initial fund of £400,000 has been set aside for this
Carers and the support services that they use will be allocated a fund of £100,000
The voluntary sector and the work of the Community Catalysts are supported with funds up to £50,000
£150,000 has been set aside to help support providers who experience COVID-19 outbreaks within their settings
Further additional support for CQC regulated providers (care homes and community care providers), in particular to support with covering staff wages while attending appointments for vaccinations and costs associated with testing and visitations has been allocated at £75 per bed (care homes) and at £50 per supported user (community care providers)

Norfolk County Council recently hosted a webinar for care providers on the Infection Control Fund. To see the slides and questions and answers from this webinar please click here.

Following Round 1 of the Infection Control Fund, NCC has recognised the importance of providers having a direct contact to discuss concerns or queries with and has established a dedicated mailbox for this purpose. If you have anything ICF related that you wish to discuss please do email infectioncontrol@norfolk.gov.uk

31 July 2020 update

As you will recall the ICF is being paid to local authorities over two equal instalments, for Norfolk this is a payment of £6.2m in each payment. The grant itself was then split into:

A 75% share which was automatically passed by the Council to care homes based on CQC registered care beds and a fixed sum of £481.34 per bed
A 25% share which we provided on a claims basis to home support, supported living, housing related support and housing with care providers on a claim basis

In both instances you were required to complete a plan for the grant and return a signed grant agreement stating that certain conditions would be met. We are pleased to report that with both the 75% and 25% we have materially distributed the funding.

At the time of receiving the initial grant from Central government we were informed that the two instalments would be received by local authorities in May and July 2020. The second instalment has now been received and we will be aiming to get this out to providers over the next couple of weeks.

Please see below guidance on the process for claiming the next instalment of the grant.

75% share for care homes

We aim to complete the administration of this grant as light as possible. Where you have:

Returned a signed original grant agreement letter
Returned the expenditure plan, headed as “Use of Adult Social Care Infection Control Fund”, and responded to any queries raised in relation to this document
Are meeting the conditions of the grant, namely the full completion of the National Capacity Tracker

We will again make an automatic payment to you. Where we feel the above conditions have not been met, we will contact you in order for us to jointly resolve together.

We recognise that some providers did not want the ICF funding provided initially. We will assume for these providers that this also refers to instalment 2. Should you have changed your position in relation to instalment 2 please contact us at ssdpayments@norfolk.gov.uk at your earliest convenience to avoid missing out.

To clarify, in our letter of the 29 May we stated one of your actions as “Provide confirmation of the actual spending incurred to enable us to pay the second instalment in July – we will provide more detail of this before the end of June”. We have considered this and are confident that where you have supplied your expenditure plan, you will have indeed completed the relevant paperwork to meet this condition. We do however want to remind you that the whole grant needs to be spent by 23 September 2020 and a final statement certifying that you have spent the funding on those measures needs to be returned by that date. Unfortunately, any unused funding will need to be returned via Norfolk County Council to the Government.

25% share for local distribution

The proposal for the distribution of the 25% has been developed in conjunction with NorCA. The funding provided will need to be used targeted at the infection control measures outlined by the Government and including PPE. The funds will be distributed as follows:

Care homes/supported living/housing with care and dom care/home support providers – We will provide a payment of £90 per registered bed/number of people supported for those providers that were included as part of instalment 1 claim.

For care homes the payment of the 25% will be made with the 75% payment (assuming the grant conditions of Instalment 1 have been met).

For supported living/housing with care and dom care/home support providers you will be sent a grant agreement form to be completed accepting the grant conditions for instalment 2.

Fund background

This is a £600m national grant, of which Norfolk will receive £12.4m. It is received in two equal instalments. For each instalment of £6.2m, 75% (£4.6m) is passed to Care Homes based on their CQC registered beds. In Norfolk there were 9,650 registered beds, with each bed attracting £481.34. The 25% (£1.5m) had no allocation method prescribed and has allowed Local Authorities to allocate it in the most appropriate manner for infection control measures.

The first instalment of grant was received by the Council in late May, and the 75% payment was made on 4June 2020. The Council is finalising its process relating to the 25% and will look to release this shortly. The second instalment of the grant is due to the Council in July 2020.

Further information about the grant and how to access it

To find out about support on offer from Central Government and the New Anglia Growth Hub during the coronavirus outbreak see Support for Norfolk businesses.

We are offering extra support to care providers in the following ways.

Support for cashflow

We will support your cashflow through our payment approach:

Residential, Nursing and Supported Living providers have no change to the pre-Covid-19 payment mechanism.
Home Support - For the first 16 weeks of the pandemic, you have been paid automatically every four weeks based on an average value of your last two actual, four-weekly invoices (amended for any significant exceptional adjustments: ie one-off payments or refunds and uplifted to 2020/21 prices). This arrangement will continue for the next few payment cycles while we work with providers (via NorCA) to agree a phased movement back towards actual usage payments by late summer/early autumn. Please also continue to enter and record actuals in the normal way as this is invaluable information about service levels during the pandemic.
Day Opportunities – For the first 16 weeks of the pandemic, you have been paid automatically every four weeks based on an average value of your last two actual, four-weekly invoices (amended for any significant exceptional adjustments: ie one-off payments or refunds and uplifted to 2020/21 prices). You will have received a letter that outlines the next phase of support. To support our providers, we are pleased to advise you that Cabinet have approved the proposal to offer day service providers further funding for up to 12 weeks from 22 June 2020. This is a conditional funding offer. It is intended to give you time to work with us to consider and formulate plans for delivering a Covid-19 safe day service model, which can meet the needs and deliver good outcomes for individuals. The offer of funding for up to the next 12 weeks will be based on the same calculation, but how much you will receive will be based on the below:
- Providers who can commit to working with us but are not currently able to deliver a service will receive a percentage of the average payment. You will need to evidence the reasons why you are currently unable to deliver a service at this present time.
- Providers who can commit to working with us and can demonstrate a meaningful delivery of service to existing customers during the interim period will receive up to 100% of the average payment. The final amount will be based on any reduction in funding needed as a result of staff who have been furloughed.

Support for additional costs

This outlines our financial support to you in managing the additional costs you may be facing at this unprecedented time. This is part of a mutual aid approach which will recognise not only those costs but also the requirement to work differently to meet the ongoing care and support needs of people.

Central Government has recognised that local care providers will require additional financial support to maintain critical support services at this current time. As a result, we are offering a financial support package for adult social care providers.

Financial support for carers

The Care Workers Charity has set up a Covid-19 emergency Grant programme for currently employed care workers who must take time off work due to Covid-19 for either illness or self-isolation or for funeral costs. Applicants must work in role that is involved in or supports the provision of adult, elderly or disability care.

NHS-funded nursing care rate

On 30 April the government announced that the NHS-funded nursing care rate is being increased to £183.92 from 1 April 2020. For more information see NHS-funded nursing care rate announced for 2020 to 2021.