Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to ensure that additional funding for hospital discharge will be allocated to registered care settings.

The Department has no current plans to provide discharge funding directly to care providers.

The £500 million Adult Social Care Discharge Fund has been distributed to local authorities and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). The funding has been pooled locally into the Better Care Fund, to facilitate joint planning and decision-making across health and care systems. This funding should be used for locally determined measures to reduce delayed discharge, which could include funding care packages in registered care settings.

The additional £200 million funding specifically for short term care is held centrally by NHS England (NHSE) and allocated to ICBs, who may work with registered care settings where that is the most appropriate approach in their circumstances.