Agenda item

Report of Corporate Director for People

Councillor Williams, Portfolio Holder for Adults and Health, and Anna Coltman, Commissioning Manager, presented the report, which detailed the Government’s commitment, in the ‘COVID-19 Response: Autumn and Winter Plan 2021’ (announced on 14 September 2021), to support local authorities and social care providers to maintain safe staffing levels over the winter period and to continue working closely with the care sector to build sufficient workforce capacity across services.

The ‘Adult Social Care Winter Plan’, published on 3 November 2021, set out the support government would be providing to the adult social care sector to meet the challenges it faced during winter. The plan includes a commitment to providing workforce recruitment and retention funding, originally announced on 21 October 2021, to support local authorities and providers to recruit and retain sufficient staff over winter, and support growth and sustain existing workforce capacity.

Nottingham City Council (NCC) has been allocated £1,049,498 from the Government’s Workforce Recruitment and retention fund (WR&R fund), to be spent by 31 March 2022. The primary purpose of the WR&R fund is to deliver additional staffing capacity in adult social care through recruitment and retention activity during the period 21 October 2021 to 31 March 2022. This is a ring-fenced grant and will be paid in two instalments to NCC. The first instalment of 60% will be processed as soon as possible, the second instalment of 40% will be paid in January 2022 and will be conditional on local authorities having completed a return to the Department of Health and Social Care by 14 January 2022.

During discussion, it was stated that although the vacancy rate of 2.1% seemed low, this didn’t reflect turnover of staff, which at some providers was almost 100% over the last 12 months.

It was also stated that the requirement to be vaccinated against Covid was having an impact of the service, with some reporting up to 30% of staff leaving the sector, a lot of who would normally be moving within the sector but were no longer able to do so.

Resolved to

(1)  approve acceptance and spend, as per the terms and conditions of the grant, by Nottingham City Council of the funding from the Department of Health and Social Care;

(2)  delegate authority to the Director for Adult Health and Social Care, in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Adults and Health, to award grants to social care providers to support recruitment and retention of staff during winter months.

Reasons for recommendations

(1)  Nottingham City Council (NCC) has been allocated £1,049,498 from the Government’s Workforce Recruitment and retention fund (WR&R fund), to be spent by 31 March 2022. The primary purpose of the WR&R fund is to deliver additional staffing capacity in adult social care through recruitment and retention activity during the 21 October 2021 to 31 March 2022 period.

(2)  This is a ring-fenced grant and will be paid in two instalments to NCC:

(i)  the first instalment 60% will be processed as soon as possible;

(ii)  the second instalment 40% will be paid in January 2022 and will be conditional on local authorities having completed a return to the Department of Health and Social Care by 14 January 2022.

(3)  The expectation is that the grant will be fully spent on addressing local workforce capacity pressures through recruitment and retention activity by 31 March 2022. The grant conditions are clear that ‘spent’ means that expenditure has been incurred between 21 October 2021 and 31 March 2022. This means the activity leading to the expense must have happened by 31 March 2022, so that the local authority is accruing the expense and it appears in the local authority’s 2021 to 2022 accounts.

(4)  We anticipate that up to 20% will be retained by NCC for internal initiatives, including communications, marketing, supporting internal assessment capacity and activities to support the independent sector as follows:

Communications and marketing activities

A local recruitment campaign aiming increase interest in a job in adult social care among target audiences, increase the number of applications into social care jobs and to raise awareness of the sector.

Adult Assessment support

Increase capacity within homecare to support with hospital discharge, manage candidate selection and increase training and development opportunities.

Activities to support the independent sector

Planned activities to support the independent sector with recruitment include Jobs Hub Pathways to Health and Social Care events in neighbourhoods and events in partnership with Nottinghamshire County Council.

(5)  Up to 80% of the WR&R grant will be passported to homecare providers across the City with the expectation that the grant will be fully spent on addressing their local workforce capacity pressures through recruitment and retention activities.

Other options considered

Given the short-time scales, we are unable to fully outline the expenditure in this report as February’s committee does not allow enough time to spend and allocate the grant funding as per the terms and conditions of the grant.