Additional £102m DFG funding will be distributed from spring 2023

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has revealed that, from spring 2023, it will be investing an additional £102 million over two years to increase funding and support for people to adapt or maintain their homes.

This new money will be distributed as a capital top-up to the £573 million per year Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) funding and managed in the same way through the Better Care Fund (BCF).

This important DFG announcement comes as part of a new policy paper from DHSC titled ‘Next steps to put People at the Heart of Care’, which was published yesterday (4 April 2023).

It builds on the 2021 whitepaper published by the UK Government, ‘People at the Heart of Care: Adult social care reform whitepaper’, which detailed a 10-year vision for adult social care. This whitepaper was centred around three ambitions: people have choice, control, and support to live independent lives; people can access outstanding quality and tailored care and support; and people find adult social care fair and accessible.

Now, the new policy paper sets out how the government is building on its progress over the last year by implementing the “most impactful proposals”, along with some new commitments. It includes key milestones for reform and sets out changes for people who draw on care and support, unpaid carers, and people who work in social care.

One of the headline announcements for the assistive technology sector from the paper is the new £102 million DFG funding. This investment is designed to encourage local authorities to fund supplementary services that are agile and help people stay independent, support hospital discharge, and make minor adaptations, such as through the commissioning and delivery of home improvement agencies.

According to the paper, this will better ensure safety, warmth and timely access to the right adaptations and small alterations.

Another important announcement from the paper is that of the £1.7 billion the whitepaper committed to social care reform, up to £600 million remains to be allocated. This will be invested over the next two years after the government has drawn on lessons learned from its investment in improving discharge, according to DHSC.

However, Sarah McClinton, President of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), believes that holding back this £600 million funding is an issue, as the adult social care sector is in “crisis”.

She responded: “This plan leaves the Government’s vision for reform in tatters. It ducks the hard decisions and kicks the can down the road again until after the next election. £600m is being held back from the £1.7bn of reform programmes the Government announced last year. But adult social care is in crisis, with staff vacancies at an all-time high and half a million people waiting for care and support. Now’s not the time to be holding funding back, it needs to reach people who need care and support as soon as possible.

“If the Government won’t commit fully to this first step towards the long-term fully funded plan we need, the crisis will only continue. That means many more people won’t get the quality care and support they need, forcing more family and friends to step in where they can, more people deteriorating and being admitted to hospital and further damage to the NHS and the economy.”

From a technology perspective, the paper also emphasises a greater focus on technology investment through digital transformation in adult social care.

As part of this “digital transformation” in adult social care, over the next two years, it is investing more than £100 million to drive rapid adoption of digital social care records that will enable secure sharing of information across health and care services and free up time for staff; test, evaluate, and scale technologies based on local priorities, which will increase the use of technologies that improve the quality and safety of care, reduce avoidable hospital admissions, and promote independent living; and support care providers to boost their digital readiness, including digital skills, connectivity, and cyber security, so staff can effectively use technology to provide high-quality care.