More occupational therapists needed to deliver the Disabled Facilities Grant

Claire Barcham, Senior Officer, Policy and Practice for ADASS looks at the challenge of distributing the Disabled Facilities Grant given the shortage of occupational therapists needed to deliver it.  

Hearing the Government’s announcement of an additional £86million for the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) felt both exciting and ironic in equal measure. Exciting because I know how much this funding is urgently needed by people desperate to adapt their homes and maintain their independence.  

It also felt ironic because distributing the grant relies on occupational therapists who assess people’s needs and recommend home adaptations paid for through the DFG. Yet occupational therapists (OT) are in chronic short supply, while facing an increased workload as people’s support becomes more complex.  So, while the DFG increase is a welcome, unless we address the wider issue of social care workforce recruitment and retention, local authorities face a challenge to deliver it.   

What’s more, many local authorities are seeing their funding for OT apprenticeship schemes being clawed back through ‘in year savings’, meaning we won’t have the workforce in place to ensure the grants get to those people who need it. 

New OT apprenticeships have offered local authorities a useful solution to help recruit to this ‘in demand’ profession. They offer a more practical way for some people to enter the profession and earn while they learn.  They also mean people can qualify in two rather than three years, which is helpful considering the shortage of OTs. Yet one of the challenges local authorities have faced is the short time scale of the apprenticeship funding, getting staff into place to provide the necessary support, as well as people enrolling on the programme within short time frames. 

The result of this is that many local authorities, who have unspent money from the first tranche of apprenticeship funding, will have to repay this money by the end of March 2025. This means that what was intended as a longer-term project would see no more funding after 31 March this year and a risk that fewer OTs as well as social workers will be trained at a time when we know more are needed. 

Adult Social Care is a people business – both in terms of the people we serve and the people we employ.  A lot of focus has gone (understandably) on the hundreds of thousands of home carers, support workers and residential workers in the care workforce, but local authorities must also be supported to train, employ and retain occupational therapists and social workers, amongst others. Without the necessary staff, the health and social care system will not achieve the improvements needed within the expected timetable, and this will be detrimental to people’s health and wellbeing.