Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 68
68
Rejected
Paragraph: 220
Pass recruitment and retention funds directly to local providers for targeted campaigns.
Recommendation
Local providers are best suited to understand the recruitment challenges in their local areas. The Government must pass recruitment and retention funds directly to providers to be invested in local recruitment campaigns.
Government Response Summary
The government disagrees with the recommendation to pass funds directly to providers, stating that local health and care systems are better placed to determine how to use workforce funds, which are already provided to local systems.
Paragraph Reference:
220
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
We disagree with this recommendation. We believe that local health and care systems are best placed to understand workforce recruitment and retention challenges within their area. This is consistent with the duties placed upon local systems in the Care Act, and the strategic oversight role set out in the Integration White Paper. It is for this reason that we provided our workforce funds and latest discharge fund to local systems, which can be used on local recruitment campaigns—which all providers can access, as well as other measures as deemed appropriate. Through the Workforce Recruitment and Retention Funds (WRRFs) we made £462.5 million available to local authorities to support local authorities to work with providers to boost staffing and support existing care workers through the winter until March 2022. We expected local authorities to work closely with adult social care providers to determine how funding should best be spent, including passporting funding directly to adult social care providers where appropriate. Subject to the grant conditions being satisfied, local authorities could choose to pass some or all of their funding to care providers within the local authorities’ geographical area to meet pressure on staff capacity due to winter pressures. Local authorities, through engagement with care providers, are best placed to decide how the funding should be used to address workforce pressures. The learning we have taken from the WRRFs has helped to inform the design of the £500m discharge fund for this Winter.