Guidance

Adult Social Care Infection Control and Testing Fund

Sets out the measures that the new Infection Control and Testing Fund will support, including distribution of funds, conditions on funds and reporting requirements.

• From: Department of Health and Social Care
• Published: 29 March 2021
• Last updated: 8 April 2021 — See all updates

Applies to England

Documents

Adult Social Care Infection Control and Testing Fund: local authority circular

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Adult Social Care Infection Control and Testing Fund ring-fenced grant 2021: guidance

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Annex A: grant determination

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Annex B: grant allocations

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Annex C: grant conditions

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Annex D: assurance statement

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Annex D: assurance statement

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Annex E: local authority reporting template: reporting point 1, due 19 May 2021

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Annex E: local authority reporting template: reporting point 2, due 30 July 2021

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Details

This guidance applies to the first Infection Control and Testing Fund, which operated between April 2021 and June 2021. While this fund is no longer live, this guidance is preserved here for reference.

See the guidance for the latest round of funding, round 3.

The Adult Social Care Infection Control Fund was first introduced in May 2020. It was extended in October 2020 and, by March 2021 had provided over £1.1 billion of ring-fenced funding to support adult social care providers in England for infection prevention and control (IPC).

The Rapid Testing Fund was introduced in January 2021 to support additional lateral flow testing of staff in care homes, and enable indoors, close contact visiting where possible.

The new Infection Control and Testing Fund has consolidated these funding streams, with an extra £341 million of funding until June 2021. The purpose of this fund is to support adult social care providers to:

1. reduce the rate of COVID-19 transmission within and between care settings through effective IPC practices and increase uptake of staff vaccination, and

2. conduct rapid testing of staff and visitors in care homes, high risk supported living and extra care settings, to enable close contact visiting where possible

This brings the total ring-fenced funding for infection prevention and control to almost £1.35 billion and support for lateral flow testing to £288 million in care settings.

Published 29 March 2021
Last updated 8 April 2021 + show all updates

1. 8 April 2021

   Updated 'Adult Social Care Infection Control and Testing Fund ring-fenced grant 2021: guidance', and annexes C and E of the grant documents, to reflect that, at a national level, the funding is split on a 70/30 basis for infection prevention and control funding and 60/40 for rapid testing funding. However, at a council level, there will be some variation in the split reflecting the nature of care in that area.

2. 29 March 2021

   First published.