National Care Forum Members Briefing 3.2.23

 

Information as shared by National Care Forum

Please find a short briefing below which includes a few items you may have missed over the last week. The Finance Forum has been included in this mailing.

Delay to Energy Bills Support Scheme Alternative Funding

BEIS is currently working to develop a scheme to support households who do not have a direct relationship with a domestic energy supplier, through a £400 discount on their energy bill costs. This is now long overdue, and we've had an update that this may not be in place until 27 February at the latest in all areas. We will update you as we learn more but Local Authorities will be central to the scheme. BEIS is currently running a pilot scheme using test data in four LA areas and will soon open this to test with eligible households in those areas - again, we will update you when we have more information. When the scheme does open, there will be an application portal and accompanying contact centre helpline.

We are continuing to push for additional support for the sector in terms of the energy schemes overall and are in the process of working with a number of other representative organisations to find a constructive way forward with the Treasury and BEIS.

£53m to improve housing support for drug and alcohol recovery

This morning DHSC and DLUHC announced a £53m fund to be allocated to 28 Local Authorities across England for the purposes of improving housing support for drug and alcohol recovery. This appears to be an addition to the wider £780m 10-year drug strategy announced in 2021 . Currently there only appears to be a press release available with no details of which Local Authorities are getting this additional money. We'll bring you more information when we have it.  

Vivaldi - Research to Care

The Vivaldi project is looking for providers with more than three homes in England that care for older adults, to take part in research that will shape the future of UK policy on COVID testing. Please see the attached flyer for more details. If you have any questions or would like to get involved, please email cctu.vivaldi@ucl.ac.uk.

Upcoming Industrial Action

ASLEF and RMT unions are striking today, bringing disruption to train services. Next week there will be NHS strikes every day, with the exception of Wednesday.

Nurses will be striking on 6th and 7th February in England.

Unite Ambulance  workers will be striking on following dates across England:

  • 6 and 17 February, and 6 and 20 March – West Midland

  • 6 and 20 February, and 6 and 20 March – North East

  • 6 and 20 February, and 6 and 20 March – East Midlands

  • 6 and 22 February, 6 and 20 March – North West

GMB Ambulance workers will be striking on the following dates across England:

  • 6 and 20 February and 6 and 20 March - South West, South East Coast, North West, South Central, North East, East Midland, Yorkshire and Wales

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy has announced strikes across 30 trusts on 9 February.

Members of the National Education Union have announced a series of potential strikes over the next 2 months, following on from the strike earlier this week:

  • 28 February – North and north-west England, Yorkshire and Humber

  • 1 March – East Midlands, West Midlands, and the NEU’s eastern region

  • 2 March – London, South-east and south-west England

  • 15 and 16 March – England and Wales

NHSE Delivery Plan for Recovering Urgent and Emergency Care Services

Last Monday, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced NHSE’s Delivery Plan for Recovering Urgent and Emergency Care Services. You can find a copy of the press release here and the full plan here. The focus of the Secretary of State’s oral statement and press release, unsurprisingly, is on getting people out of hospital, clearing NHS waiting lists and improving ambulance times.

There are welcome measures in this plan, recognising the importance of making access to Urgency and Emergency Care better for people and getting people the right care, at the right time, in the right place. There is also a welcome recognition of the need for more hospital capacity and ambulance capacity. However, there is also quite a lot missing if this plan is to have any hope of being successful:　　

  • Lip service is paid to the challenges in social care and its importance throughout the plan, but no real solutions are suggested, other than restating the money announced in the Autumn Statement. There is nothing to assure providers that the redirected adult social care reform money in the Autumn Statement and subsequent discharge funds will be used to enable them to employ more people on better pay, terms and conditions for longer.　

  • There is a lack of any measures on the workforce needed to deliver this plan, and nothing at all is mentioned about the social care workforce. The 300k vacancies across the health and care system are a massive challenge and there is no plan to solve either.　　

  • There is little recognition of the need to join up virtual care at home, community health support and adult social care. Care at home is a massive potential enabler here but the focus is all on health and clinicians.　　

  • There is a missed opportunity to require ICBs and ICPs to properly engage with their social care providers at the top table to plan and design implementation together. This plan is evidence of this lack of co-production – there does not appear to be any social care input.　

In short, there seems to be little understanding of the hugely valuable local landscapes of social care assets in each system. Until we get real partnership and understanding, little real change will happen. For example, the NHS does not necessarily need to create its own new intermediate care from scratch, it could work with existing local services to make the most of what already exists.　　

We have created a fuller summary of the plan which can be accessed here.

 
General News, GovernmentAnnabelle Williams dos Anjosenergy, funding, industrial action