Infection control fund | Leicestershire County Council Professional Services Portal

The Adult Social Care Infection Control Fund is worth £600 million nationally. The purpose of this fund is to support adult social care providers, including those who don’t have a contract with us, to reduce the rate of COVID-19 transmission in and between care homes and support wider workforce resilience.

We will receive £6,682,238. This funding is designed to assist care homes with the costs of an additional and very specific range of workforce issues which may impact on infection control in relation to COVID 19.

We must pass 75% of the funding to care homes within our geographical area on a 'per beds' basis, this equates to roughly £962 per bed. To be eligible to access the funding, homes will need to be registered and regularly entering data onto the government run Capacity Tracker.

We have the discretion to allocate the remaining 25% of funding to care homes or to domiciliary care providers and to support wider workforce resilience in relation to COVID-19 infection control. We are planning to use the 25% of the funding for Home Care providers and a small contingency amount will be held for emergency support for providers.

The government will pay the fund to us in two instalments, one in May, which care providers will only receive if they have registered and made at least one update onto the Capacity Tracker and one in July.

The government has set very clear guidelines regarding how the funding needs to be spent and no payments will be able to be made unless certain conditions are met, including us being satisfied that the funding is being used for infection control purposes. Clawback provisions will apply, including that the provider must repay any amounts not used for infection control measures.

The areas funding should cover are:

ensuring that staff who are isolating in line with government guidance receive their normal wages while doing so. At the time of issuing the grant determination this included staff with suspected symptoms of Covid 19 awaiting a test, or any staff member for a period following a positive test.
ensuring, so far as possible, that members of staff work in only one care home. This includes staff who work for one provider across several homes or staff that work on a part time basis for multiple employers and includes agency staff (the principle being that the fewer locations that members of staff work the better)
limiting or cohorting staff to individual groups of residents or floors/wings, including segregation of COVID-19 positive residents;
to support active recruitment of additional staff if they are needed to enable staff to work in only one care home or to work only with an assigned group of residents or only in specified areas of a care home, including by using and paying for staff who have chosen to temporarily return to practice, including those returning through the NHS returners programme. These staff can provide vital additional support to homes and underpin effective infection control while permanent staff are isolating or recovering from Covid-19.
steps to limit the use of public transport by members of staff. Where they don’t have their own private vehicles, this could include encouraging walking and cycling to and from work and supporting this with the provision of changing facilities and rooms and secure bike storage or use of local taxi firms.
providing accommodation for staff who proactively choose to stay separately from their families in order to limit social interaction outside work. This may be provision on site or in partnership with local hotels.

It is a condition of the payments that the cost of any specific infection control measures are met by providers on the basis that:

there is no increase in any relevant rates (except those relating to hourly rates of pay to ensure staff movement from one care home to another care home is minimised) from the existing rates
third party charges (for example, of costs to avoid the use of public transport) are paid at the normal market rates and
in no circumstances is any element of profit or mark-up applied to any costs or charges incurred.

We must ensure that funding which we allocate for a measure described above is allocated on condition that the recipient care provider:

completes the government run Capacity Tracker regularly, ideally on a daily basis
use the funding for those measures outlined above only
will provide us with a statement certifying that they have spent the funding on those measures by 23 September 2020.
if requested to do so will provide us or Department for Health and Social Care with receipts or such other information as they request to evidence that the funding has been so spent,
provide the Department for Health and Social Care or us with an explanation of any matter relating to funding and its use by the recipient as they think necessary or expedient for the purposes of being assured that the money has been used in an appropriate way in respect of those measures.
will return any amounts which are not spent on those measures.

Infection control fund - questions and answers PDF on the National Care Forum website

Care home plan - guide for local providers PDF, 1.2 mbOpens new window

Cost eligibility - additional guidance PDF, 231 kbOpens new window

Additional guidance relating to home care PDF, 119 kbOpens new window