Today the Welsh First Minister, Mark Drakeford, said that all care workers in Wales will received a £500 payment which will provide recognition for an often “under-valued and overlooked” workforce.The payment will be available to some 64,600 care home workers and domiciliary care workers throughout Wales.
It comes after the Welsh Government has provided an initial £40m extra funding for adult social care services to help meet the extra costs associated with responding to the coronavirus pandemic. This extra funding was, in the first instance, intended to meet the extra costs to providers for responding to the care needs of their clients but it can now also be used to address a number of the business pressures the sector faces.
To date the Welsh Government had provided PPE to the residential care sector from its own stocks through twice weekly deliveries and the First Minister confirmed that testing should continue in care homes where Covid-19 might be present.
First Minister Mark Drakeford said:
Tens of thousands of people work in social care in Wales, looking after some of the most vulnerable people in our communities and are doing so with great dedication in often challenging circumstances.
They are undertaking tasks, which involve a high level of intimate personal care, often accepting a greater degree of risk and responsibility. Many of our social care workers are juggling their own personal caring responsibilities with their professional ones.
I want our social care workforce know their hard work is both appreciated and recognised. This payment is designed to provide some further recognition of the value we attach to everything they are doing to – it recognises this group of people are providing the invisible scaffolding of services, which support both our NHS and our wider society.
Further details about the extra payment will be announced shortly. The Welsh Government is working with local authorities, who commission social care services in Wales, and with trade unions and Care Forum Wales, to finalise details.
The First Minister has called on the UK Government not to tax the extra payment, enabling social care workers to keep the full amount. The Welsh Government is also working with the Department for Work and Pensions to make sure it does not impact on people’s benefit entitlements.
The First Minister added:
We are urging the UK Government and the HMRC to make an exception in these truly exceptional circumstances.
Today’s announcement follows the announcement of the death in service payment for the families of all NHS and social care staff made by Health and Social Services Minister Vaughan Gething on Tuesday.
This scheme will provide eligible beneficiaries with a one-off sum of £60,000 and will apply to those working in frontline roles and locations where personal care is provided to individuals who may have contracted coronavirus.
The Welsh Government is also increasing the amount of funding for the Discretionary Assistance Fund (DAF) so it can support the calls for financial help from people across Wales.As the stay-at-home restrictions continue, families have been turning to the fund for additional support to help them with some of the financial pressures and challenges they are facing.
The Welsh Government’s Minister for Housing and Local Government, Julie James, has called on the UK Government to make urgent changes to Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP) to help protect more people in hardship and provide faster help to those who need it. It says that the Coronavirus is having a dramatic impact on people’s and family finances with claims for Universal Credit and calls on the DAF at a record high. These are some of the most vulnerable people in our society, who, through no fault of their own, find themselves facing a significant change of circumstances. It’s only right that we do all we can to protect them from extreme financial pressure. This additional funding will help the Welsh Government support as many people as we can through this period of financial hardship.
The DAF provides grant funding to support people experiencing extreme hardship. Many of people will be the most vulnerable in society due to issues relating to poverty, physical and mental health issues and are therefore at greater risk from the impacts of coronavirus. The Welsh Government has written to the UK Government urging it to change Discretionary Housing Payments. These are available to people in receipt of Housing Benefit and Universal Credit, but they have to wait at least five weeks to receive it. People who are not entitled to either of those two benefits, but are on reduced incomes due to coronavirus, have no entitlement to the payments.
It says that the UK Government should make a permanent change to give all Universal Credit claimants entitlement to DHP from the date of their claim, rather than waiting for five weeks. The Welsh Government also proposes a temporary change to give those people who are not in receipt of these benefits but are facing difficulties meeting housing-related costs as a result of coronavirus access to DHP.