Warwickshire County Council has to date been allocated £3.6m from a national funding pot of £600m to help with Covid19 infection control at Warwickshire care homes.As of today, £2...
Warwickshire County Council has to date been allocated £3.6m from a national funding pot of £600m to help with Covid19 infection control at Warwickshire care homes.
As of today, £2.7m of this money has been distributed directly to care homes from the newly formed, Adult Social Care Infection Control Fund. The money is allocated by Central Government on a per bed’ basis. For Warwickshire this means that 170 care homes will receive funds of up to £1,000 per bed, to help reduce the spread of infections amongst our most vulnerable citizens.
The funding will help care homes to secure supplies for decontamination and deep cleaning, manage staffing issues, to enable staff to get to work without using public transport, to ensure staff are appropriately paid when isolating and to secure PPE provisions and to access other infection control measures.
Councillor Les Caborn, Portfolio Holder for Adult Social Care at Warwickshire County Council said: “Warwickshire County Council’s overriding priority remains to keep people in Warwickshire, especially those who are most vulnerable, as safe as possible. We are committed to the delivery of a comprehensive and consistent approach to supporting care homes, in order to promote competence and resilience in the management of this outbreak.”
He added: “This second wave of funding will help support all of the great work that has been carried out by the care system already. Care homes, large and small, continue to provide a very high standard of care to its residents, while keeping them safe and protected at the same time. Working with local partners, we will endeavour to protect the vulnerable during this difficult time.”
Most of the funding (75%) will go to care homes directly, and 25% can be used at the local authority’s discretion to help support wider workforce resilience. Examples include the recruitment of additional infection control nurses to support care providers more generally and to provide funds to domiciliary care providers in supporting the management of infections amongst staff and customers.
A second allocation of money from Central Government is due to be sent in July.