Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the Workforce Capacity Fund.

From January to March 2021, we have supported the adult social care sector through the £120 million Workforce Capacity Fund (WCF) to increase capacity to meet critical staffing shortages caused by COVID-19. By 8 October, local authorities reported that over the funding period, a total of 7.3 million additional hours of work and 39,047 new recruits were generated by the WCF. While 75% of ​the 59 local authority survey respondents agreed that the WCF was either ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ effective in supporting them to strengthen workforce capacity, we also heard that the duration of the fund limited how effectively the sector could utilize the funding.

Learning from the WCF has also informed the design and implementation of the recently launched £162.5 million Workforce Recruitment and Retention Fund for winter 2021/2022. The outcomes and findings from the WCF are available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/workforce-capacity-fund-for-adult-social-care/workforce-capacity-fund-outcomes-and-findings-october-2021