Issue details

On 15 May 2020 the government announced a care home support package backed by a £600m infection control fund with the aim of preventing and controlling the spread of COVID-19 in all registered care homes and help improve infection control measures across the care market. The specified purpose of the grant is to provide support to adult social care providers, including those with whom the Council does not have a contract, to reduce the rate of COVID-19 transmission in and between care homes and support wider workforce resilience to deliver infection control. The West Sussex allocation of this money is £13.363m.

The expectation from government was that 75% of the money should be passported directly to registered care home providers (including those the Council doesn’t already contract with) and the remaining 25% should be allocated based on local need.  The grant funding is subject to a number of conditions set by central government, set out in the grant circular distributed by Government, which the Council is required to comply with.

Due to the need to provide timely financial support to care providers who are facing challenges related to the Covid-19 pandemic an urgent decision was taken to allocate the 75% of Infection Control Funding to care providers (Report ref:OKD17 20/21). A further urgentdecision on the allocation of the remaining 25% of Infection Control Funding is now taken.

Please note this decision has been published to the Forward Plan for the required 28 Days. Following publication of the decision on 15 July 2020 the Adult Social Care Team were unable to wait for the usual 7 working day call-in period as the decision was urgent due to the need to provide timely support to the care sector in West Sussex.