Health and wellbeing boards to run £3.8bn fund
A £3.8 billion funding pot to combine health and social care services is likely to be overseen by health and wellbeing boards.
Jon Rouse, director general for social care, local government and care partnerships at the Department of Health, told delegates at the Chartered Institute of Housing’s annual conference how the funding would work after it was announced in today’s spending review.
He said the funding is likely to be overseen by local authority health and well-being boards – and they could decide to use ‘some of the money in supporting people-type investments’.
In answer to a question from Tony Stacey, chief executive of 6,000-home South Yorkshire Housing, about whether the government would consider reinstating the ring fence to supporting people funding, Mr Rouse said that this could hamper ‘efficiency and financial innovation’.
He added that the health and well-being boards, which upper-tier local authorities have been required to form under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, may opt to use some of the integrated funding announced by the chancellor today on housing-related support services.
Mr Rouse also confirmed that the £3.8 billion included some capital funding. ‘It is from an existing source of capital – it’s not new money – but it is giving us much more flexibility about how it is used,’ he said.
‘It’s not going to be of a scale to fund new buildings, but it might be utilised to facilitate aids and adaptations.’
The 152 health and well-being boards in England will need to draw up a plan for how they will use the integrated funding, and this will need to be ‘agreed by ministers’, Mr Rouse said.
‘We have got to have a degree of assurance that it will lead to integration and outcomes,’ he added.
