Accelerating Reform Fund

The Accelerating Reform Fund Department is a £42.6 million fund launched by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to boost the quality and accessibility of adult social care by supporting innovation and scaling, and kickstarting a change in services to support unpaid carers. The fund is open to local authorities with adult social care duties.

The DHSC has provided grant funding to Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) to provide hands-on support to local areas in developing local partnerships and delivering projects, ensuring participants benefit from valuable shared learnings, peer support and expert insights across the country.

SCIE held a series of webinars, open to local authorities/representatives and their local partners.

• Please contact us on innovation@scie.org.uk for further information.
• The first two SCIE webinars took place on Tuesday 14 November and Monday 27 November, please see the recordings and slides.

Yes, it has been launched by the DHSC for local authorities to access in England, to make progress towards the Government’s 10 Year Vision.

The £42.6 million fund has been launched by DHSC to boost the quality and accessibility of adult social care by supporting innovation and scaling, and kickstarting a change in services to support unpaid carers. As part of the communications about the fund, health colleagues in NHS England will be informing health leaders of the Accelerating Reform Fund and its purpose.

The fund will focus on embedding and scaling approaches to transform care and support including for unpaid carers, who play such a vital, selfless role in our society. This will accelerate progress towards the government’s social care vision where people have choice, control and support to live independent lives, and where care and support is of outstanding quality and is provided in a fair, accessible way.

The DHSC is working with NHS England to inform health leaders of the Accelerating Reform Fund and its purpose including via a recent ICS learning network summit, delivery partners group and fortnightly ICS bulletin.

DHSC is working with local government and voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) partners, including members of the Health and Wellbeing Alliance, to disseminate information through their channels to ensure partners know how they can participate.

For the vast majority of people care begins at home. Many people wish to play a role in caring for their friends and family, and we recognise that, for some, this can be a significant commitment. ‘People at the Heart of Care’ and ‘Next steps to Put People at the Heart of Care’ highlighted the importance of kickstarting a change in the services provided to support unpaid carers, by building and sharing the evidence. At least one project per area will need to be focused on unpaid carers.

DHSC knows there are some fantastic examples of innovation happening across the sector. While the priorities are intended to be broad to enable local authorities to adapt them to their local priorities, the case studies are intended to illustrate an example of how this priority could be delivered. They are intended to help local authorities bring to life each innovative priority. DHSC and SCIE are keen to hear about more examples under each of these innovations and would welcome local authorities getting in touch to share existing work. Please email innovation@scie.org.uk

The purpose of the Accelerating Reform Fund is to embed and scale innovations. The funding is to support local authorities to develop projects that fit within at least one of the identified priorities for innovation and scaling, meets their local population needs and is based on relevant statutory duties and legal requirements.

Local authorities can take forward any project they choose to meet their local populations needs, if it falls under one of the 12 priorities for innovation and scaling. Projects that do not contribute to any of the 12 priorities cannot be funded through the Accelerating Reform Fund.

• The list of priorities for innovation and scaling is focused on adult social care reform. Therefore, the focus is on carers for over 18-year-olds, as well as transitions into adult social care.
• Local areas may also wish to consider how innovations can be designed to take a whole family approach as outlined in both the Care Act 2014 and the Children Act 1989.

• The list of priorities for innovation and scaling is focused on adult social care reform.
• As highlighted in the list of priorities, local areas might, for example, wish to consider how they can use innovations to also support young carers – such as for priority 7, carers assessments, this could include effective collaboration between adult social care and children’s services and assessments for young carers as they transition into adulthood.
• Local areas may also wish to consider how innovations can be designed to take a whole family approach, as outlined in both the Care Act 2014 and the Children Act 1989 (as well as the Young Carers Needs Assessment Regulations 2015).

The DHSC has launched the Accelerating Reform Fund and will oversee the fund, including receiving the Expressions of Interest. The DHSC has provided grant funding to SCIE to provide hands-on support to local areas in developing local partnerships and delivering projects, ensuring participants benefit from valuable shared learnings, peer support and expert insights across the country.

With a wealth of trusted expertise in working collaboratively to help local areas transform care, SCIE will help identify issues and challenges, galvanising co-production and ensuring people who need care and unpaid carers are at the heart of the programme.

This is a learning programme, so SCIE has an essential leadership role in gathering evidence on how to successfully tackle the barriers to scaling up innovation in social care, alongside a national evaluation partner.

The Accelerating Reform Fund is split into two phases: responsibilities for the different phases are.

Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC)

Phase 1 (Oct 23 – Mar 24)

• Fund announcement
• EOI form made available
• Confirms funding
• Signs MOUs

Phase 2 (Apr 24 – Mar 25)

• Funds SCIE support
• Collects mid and end grant reports, which will include grant expenditure
• To evaluate the effectiveness of the fund

Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)

Phase 1 (Oct 23 – Mar 24)

• Supports with queries on EOI process
• Supports connecting LAs and partners

Phase 2 (Apr 24 – Mar 25)

• Supports project delivery
• Supports project monitoring and QA
• Supports connecting similar projects

Evaluation by Evaluation partner commissioned by DHSC

• SCIE will be leading the support programme for local authorities and their partners. This will include:

1. Support to consortia to set up and deliver their chosen projects through a series of group sessions and webinars that will help identify challenges; share learning; and facilitate peer support.
2. Facilitate expert input and hands-on support for projects that need it, delivered by organisations that have developed or successfully delivered the innovation in other areas, and partners delivering the broader DHSC funded improvement offer.
3. Share learning across the programme and with the wider sector.
4. Ensure the collection of evidence to support the Fund’s evaluation.

All local areas are strongly encouraged by the DHSC to contact SCIE to understand how you can work with us and other partners in your local area to develop projects. Please email us at innovation@scie.org.uk

Developing project plans and a theory of change

With a wealth of trusted expertise in understanding the challenges faced in scaling innovation, and working collaboratively to help local areas transform care, we can help identify issues and challenges and provide general information and guidance. We are developing a theory of change to help support projects which we look forward to sharing in March.

In March, SCIE will contact all consortia to help with tools to develop project plans, including providing support and guidance on co-production.

Linking local authorities to each other and providers

As part of our support offer, SCIE will be available to facilitate peer support.

Working in partnership with health partners, care providers, and voluntary and community groups will be essential to designing effective projects.

As part of the support offer, SCIE will be available to support local areas to form partnerships and develop projects, and facilitate peer support. We can connect you to providers, including the case study providers from the priority list. Our provider list will be updated ongoing, as we become aware of any additional providers supporting local authorities or with capabilities to support, in priority areas.

Local Authorities have a statutory responsibility for delivering care. They have been asked to come together in their Integrated Care System (ICS) geography, because ICSs are critical to collaboration between health and social care. The DHSC is allocating funding to local authorities through ICS geographies to encourage collaboration between local authorities and local health boards and provide opportunities to share knowledge, expertise and resources to overcome barriers to innovation.

The lead local authority will receive the allocated funding for the consortium. If, in practice when implementing your projects, it makes sense for another local authority to lead on the implementation, those arrangements can be made at a local level.

Information on the mapping of ICS areas is available on the NHS page under ‘ICB partner organisations’.

Integrated Care Boards do not have a specific role in the Accelerating Reform Fund and do not need to be involved or sign off project plans. Consortia have been formed within Integrated Care System geographies, and funding will be allocated directly to the designated lead local authority.

This is completely separate to and differs from the Better Care Fund, which requires Integrated Care Boards and local government to agree a joint plan, owned by the Health and Wellbeing Boards.

The evaluation partner will be appointed by the DHSC soon. They will be paid by central funding.

The evaluation partner will not be SCIE, as the evaluator will need to independently evaluate the implementation of the SCIE support offer.

An independent evaluation partner will be appointed by the DHSC. They will be paid by central funding.

The evaluation of the Accelerating Reform Fund led by the national evaluation partner will assess where and how the programme supports local areas to overcome barriers to scaling innovation; the implementation of the SCIE support offer; and the ways local areas can scale up innovations after the grant has been delivered. Learning from the programme will contribute to future innovation in the sector.

Local areas are encouraged to conduct their own assessment of impact for their project, funded by their allocation from the fund, of which the national evaluation partner will collate and consider the findings.

ICS consortia are encouraged to conduct their own assessment of impact for their project, funded by their allocation from the fund, separate to, but feeding into the national evaluation. The national evaluation partner will collate and consider the findings.

SCIE would not be able to carry this out, given our involvement in supporting the fund more widely. You can choose whichever evaluation partner you would like.

All areas are being provided with a base investment to cover initial start-up costs and then additional funding that is more representative for their local population. Therefore, each consortium will receive an initial £300,000 floor (so even for all, not adjusted) to help with set-up costs for projects, in recognition that these are likely to be the same for all areas. This floor represents £12.6 million of the £42.6 million pot.

The remaining £30 million is intended to cover some ongoing programme costs and how it is distributed will be calculated based on the Adult Social Care Relative Needs Formula (RNF) at a local authority level and summed to the ICS consortia level – indicative local authority top-up allocations have now been published on Gov.uk ARF: Guidance for Local Authorities. The amount is being calculated based on the total number of local authorities opting into the consortium – so, for example, an Expression of Interest with a larger number of local authorities, larger number of people and greater demand and/or needs would result in higher levels of funding.

For local authorities that span multiple ICS geographies, their RNF funding allocation will be added to the consortium they have chosen to join.

If local authorities have chosen not to opt into the Accelerating Reform Fund, the DHSC intends for most or all of their RNF funding allocation to be redistributed amongst all ICS consortia across the country, based on the ASC RNF.

Final funding amounts were confirmed by DHSC on 9 February 2024.

The funding is available in financial years 2023/24 and 2024/25. However, the funding is being issued as a non-ringfenced grant and therefore there will be flexibility to roll over funding.

The aim of the grant is to incentivise the scaling-up of projects to new areas that can be further supported through existing local authority funding.

The ARF is about encouraging scaling up of innovative projects. The funding shouldn’t be used for backfill. If a local authority is already implementing a project that meets the criteria of the fund and falls under one of the 12 priorities, they should consider how to scale it or expand the scope in some way to ensure the funding is additional.

Ideally the fund is to scale up innovations that have some evidence that they work. Due to the need to ensure sustainability and robustness of the projects within one year, we would expect that local authorities used the fund to mainstream or scale up local pilots or innovative initiatives that have some evidence of success and track record.

Yes. As it is not a ringfenced grant, there is local flexibility to local areas to spend the funding however they best see fit to scale their projects.

No, the fund has to be spent against the activities described in the Expression of Interest (EOI) in general terms and later on in a detailed project plan.

SCIE will monitor and quality assure the progress of the projects for DHSC to ensure the fund is being used appropriately in relation to its objectives.

The funding will be provided to the designated lead local authority in each consortium. Once the lead local authority has received the funding allocation, they will distribute across the consortium as required.

The funding will be provided in two tranches, the first will be provided to local authorities in March 2024.

The second tranche will be provided in 2024/25, conditional on completion of mid-grant reporting.

The Fund includes the commitment of up to £25m for unpaid carers, and all areas will need to submit one project relating to unpaid carers.

It is important that projects are sustainable beyond the lifetime of the Accelerating Reform Fund, and we are asking local areas as part of the Expression of Interest to consider how they can ensure projects have a lasting impact.

As part of the support programme, SCIE will help projects consider sustainability. They will collect and share learnings from projects across the country to enable projects to be successfully embedded and scaled. The national evaluation partner will also assess how local areas can be best supported to continue to deliver and scale-up innovations post-delivery of the grant.

We are bringing together stakeholder experts in innovation and will be liaising with providers of innovative initiatives to help support the design and development of projects and their sustainability throughout their duration, sharing advice and learnings as we progress.