A plan co-developed with the sector including care providers to ‘respond to future threats’ will be created as part of the government’s new pandemic strategy.
The Department of Health and Social Care will co-produce an action plan with care providers, central and local government partners, voluntary organisations and care users by next year, it has revealed today.
The plan – announced as part of the government’s wide-ranging new Pandemic Strategy published today – will aim to ‘ensure clarity of local and national roles and responsibilities, outline other important policy considerations to support the sector, and be tailored to the breadth of its services and the people accessing care,’ the Department said.
The action plan will also ‘consider how to improve the resilience and preparedness of the adult social care workforce’, by looking at ‘how to improve guidance and training on infection and prevention control (IPC), access to PPE and uptake of vaccines for the adult social care workforce’, it added.
A separate piece or work to ‘explore how targeted and appropriate funding can be delivered to the adult social care sector in the event of a pandemic or emerging infectious disease outbreak’ is being carried out to ‘develop options to be evaluated in the current 2026-27 financial year, according to the documents published today.
This will ‘include clarifying roles and responsibilities, and funding routes to different areas of the sector through local authorities or directly to providers’, the Department said.
‘In a pandemic, this will help ensure funding can be appropriately provided to the sector, enabling continuity of care if faced with higher demand or staff shortages, it added in the statement released today.
The strategy has been published today alongside the government’s response to the Covid Inquiry’s module two report.
It follows the inquiry chair Baroness Hallet’s module three report examining the Covid pandemic’s “devastating” impact on the UK’s healthcare systems.
The pandemic’s impact on adult social care is being investigated by the inquiry as part of module six.
