The Department of Health and Social Care has published guidance to support local authorities in administering the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund in 2024 to 2025, which accompanies the Adult Social Care Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund grant determination 2024 to 2025, due to be published shortly.
While aimed primarily at local authorities in England, the guidance may be of interest to care providers.
The guidance says, at para 1.26: 'When setting fee rates for 2024 to 2025, local authorities should work with providers to ensure increased fee rates lead to improvements to providers’ operations, such as:
- staff pay, benefits and retention
- payment of travel time in domiciliary care
- improvements to service quality, such as eliminating call-cramming, and the ability to invest in estates and technology.'
