Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the criteria is for bids to access (a) support and (b) funding from the Government’s Carer Innovations Fund.

In June 2018 the Government published the Carers’ Action Plan, setting out a cross-Government programme of targeted work to support carers over the next two years. Through this, we announced that we would be investing £0.5 million in the Carer Innovations Fund to develop innovative and creative ideas, supported by technology, to improve carers’ everyday experiences.

In November, I announced that the budget for the Fund would be significantly increased to £5 million. We will be launching the Fund in the coming weeks and will set out the criteria as part of the application pack.