More than £550,000 is to be spent in Bury the next six months to recruit and retain adult social care workers.
The sector has come under increasing staffing pressures in recently with unfilled vacancies nationally in adult care at more than 100,000.
In addition, some workers left the care sector last month when it became a legal requirement for a all care staff to have been double vaccinated.
Health chiefs in Bury have revealed that over the next six months they will recieve £552,981 from government to ‘address workforce capacity pressures this winter through recruitment and retention activity’.
In a report to Bury’s health strategic commissioning board, Matthew Logan , strategic lead, integrated commissioning, said: “The core aims of this fund are to: support providers to maintain the provision of safe care and bolster capacity within providers to deliver more hours of care, support timely and safe discharge from hospital and support and boost the retention of staff within social care.”
He said that 45 per cent of the money would go to care homes, supported living care at home and the hospice.
A quarter would be sent to nursing homes in the borough and 27 per cent would be used to support large scale recruitment for adult social care vacancies.
The remaining three per cent will fund training for care home staff.
In care homes the funds are likely to be spent on covering agency staff costs and staff retention offers including health insurance, life insurance, paying childcare costs and increased overtime rates.
In nursing homes the money is set to be used to pay for the transfer of agency staff to permanent roles and to pay Home Office fees to support the recruitment of overseas nurses.
For recruitment of staff, funds will be used to for a larger scale internal recruitment model for adult social care vacancies, commission wellbeing and resilience support for providers and to host a recruitment event for care workers.
