You need to be employed in the UK social care sector in a role that is involved in or supports the provision of adult, elderly or disability care, such as:
- Residential social care
- Domiciliary/home care
- Supported living care
- Daycare
- Private care
- If you work in a children’s social care service you may be eligible for a grant, provided the service you work for is not in Education or NHS or a local authority provision. These job roles include, Residential Childcare Worker, Senior Residential Care Support Worker, Support Worker. Staff who work in private nurseries are not eligible for a grant from us.
The Care Worker’s Charity is currently offering the following grants:
- ISOLATION AND SHIELDING GRANTS – If you have taken one, two or more weeks off work since the 1st July 2021, due to Covid-19 for either illness, self-isolation, or shielding.
- FUNERAL COST GRANT – If you are a care worker who is responsible for paying the funeral costs of a next of kin (partner, parent, sibling, child, or other on a case-by-case basis) OR if you are the next of kin for a care worker who has passed on from COVID—19.
- CHILD CARE COST GRANT- We are providing grants to contribute to the additional Child Care costs incurred as a result of the pandemic. Please note that we are unable to award grants to applicants who are unable to evidence the link between the increased childcare costs with the COVID-19 pandemic.
- OTHER COST GRANT- A grant to contribute to COVID-19 Related Emergency Repairs. This can include car repairs, household /white goods purchase, and house repairs. Please note that we are unable to award grants to applicants who are unable to evidence the link between the need for the other cost and the COVID-19 pandemic.
You may be eligible for a grant if:
- You are currently employed within the care sector and have experienced one of the following:
- have taken off one week or more since the 1stJuly 2021 due to contracting, being exposed or shielding from COVID-19 and are receiving SSP only
- have incurred emergency repairs due to COVID-19 such as;
- Car repairs
- Household/white goods purchases
- Household repairs
- have incurred additional childcare costs as a result of the pandemic such as;
- working additional shifts to cover for other staff
- closure of nursery or change of availability of previous childcare arrangements
Please do not apply if:
- you are receiving full pay, full sick pay or are on furlough whilst shielding or isolating
- you are an NHS employee or qualified nurse
- you have already received a COVID-19 grant from us
In order for your application to be assessed please ensure you provide the following:
- Isolation or shielding grant
- your HR manager’s email address
- a bank statement with both your name, account number and sort-code visible
- COVID-19 emergency repairs
- a supporting statement that explains the need for the cost and how it is related to the COVID-19 pandemic
- a quote, invoice or receipt for the works/goods
- Childcare costs
- a confirmation letter from your employer regarding the change that has led to additional childcare costs.
- the most recent invoice for your childcare costs and an invoice from before the increased costs to highlight the additional costs
The following table sets out the different stages of your application once it is submitted to us
*These timings are an approximation only; it depends on how many applications we have received and how many are currently being processed
| Status of your application | What does this mean? | Timeline |
| Application submitted | We’ve received your application | As soon as you’ve submitted your application |
| Email HR Manager | We’ve assigned your application to one of the team and they have triggered an email to your HR Manager | Within 3 working days of receiving your application but this depends on the volume of applications we have received* |
| Pending – missing information | This can be for several reasons:
· We haven’t heard from your HR Manager so we’ve emailed them again · We’ve heard from your HR Manager but have some queries · We’ve heard from your HR Manager but we have queries about some of the information you’ve sent us and have emailed you. Please check that any emails we’ve sent you have not gone into your spam folder · We still haven’t heard from your HR Manager and have sent them a final chaser email and we’ve let you know via email and may have asked you to either chase them up or to provide an alternative HR contact |
Within 5 working days of receiving your application but this depends on the volume of applications we’ve received*.
Within around 7 to 10 working days of receiving your application depending on how many applications we are processing*
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| Eligible | One of the team has worked through your application and thinks this is eligible.
It then goes to another member of the Grants Team to go through it carefully. |
Within 3 working days of receiving all the required information but it may take longer depending on how many applications we are processing* |
| Approved | If the second stage of your application also passes the final check then it’s approved for payment.
Payment: within 2 working days of being approved subject to payment run days |
Within 2 working days of being marked as eligible.* Please note that it may take up to five working days for grants to reach your account once we have made payment. |
| Declined | If you do not meet the criteria for funding | Within 10 days of receiving your application*
We will email you to let you know. |
| Closed | If we haven’t heard back from you or the HR Manager, then we can’t continue to process your application and we will close it. | Within 10 to 14 days of receiving your application – but this may be longer depending on circumstances |
If a previous application to us was declined, you can apply again. But please consider why you were declined and check our eligibility criteria before applying again.
You can only receive a COVID-19 grant once, within 12 months of your previous grant being awarded.
Once you’ve submitted your application you’ll receive an automated response which will include a link to your application and a reference number which begins with GA 0000 followed by 4 numbers. Keep this safe – you can use it to check on the progress of your application online on our Grants Tracker and it’s the best way to see progress on your application.
We kindly ask that you do not keep emailing us to check on the progress of your application – it takes time to respond to emails; we have to search online for your application and then read the notes the assessor has written, before we can reply to you. The best way to check on progress is to use the grants tracker.
It can take up to two working weeks to assess and process an application if all the relevant documentation has been submitted. If the documentation has not been provided on submission or we need to chase your HR representative, it will inevitably take longer.
We know it is important to you that you receive a grant from us, but please do not keep emailing the Grants Team – we’ll be in touch with you if we need anything and we will always process your grant application as quickly as we can.
The Care Workers’ Charity will notify applicants via email regarding the outcome of their grant application.
This is very unlikely to happen. Check your junk mail as some of our emails to you may end up in there and we may be responding to your query or waiting for a response from you.
Grant payments directly to grantees via BACS (please note the payment can take up to 5 working days to appear in the account).
Please give us some feedback! Good or not so good, we can learn from your feedback and when it’s good it’s lovely for us to share it with the team. When it’s not so good we can learn from it and improve our processes. We always want to do our best for you but we can’t do that if we don’t hear from you. We’d love to hear your stories. We would love to do a short video interview with you, or a phone interview and if you’d prefer to be anonymous, we could work with you on writing your story and using stock photographs if you prefer. Please get in touch by emailing (insert link to info in box here)
Questions for care work employers
What do I need to do as HR professional who has been contacted by you?
Once we have received an application from a care worker we automatically trigger an email to the person they have named as their HR Manager. We do this as we need to validate information before we can process an application which will hopefully result in the care worker being paid directly.
Applicants have ticked a box to say they authorize us to contact their HR Manager for information; if you are still unsure, please talk directly to the member of staff who has made the application as we are unable to disclose any details.
We ask for specific information from you:
| What we need to know | Things to note | Why we need this information |
| Your establishment/ organisation’s Companies House Registration number | This is different to your CQC location i.d. and you may need to refer to someone else in your organisation to get this information for us | This so that we can verify that your organisation is a care provider
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| Whether the applicant is currently employed with your company and, if so, how many hours they’re contracted to work per week | This helps us work out how much funding we may be able to award them
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| We ask if you’re aware of the Infection Control Fund (if you’re in England) or the Coronavirus Social Care Staff Support Fund (In Scotland) | ENGLAND: The Infection Control Fund (ICF) information
SCOTLAND: Coronovirus Social Care Staff Support Fund information |
We need to collect this data so we can identify which local authorities are using this funding to support staff
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| We ask if you’re using the above or any other funding to support staff who are isolating in order to check whether the applicant meets our criteria | If they are on full pay or furloughed then they won’t be eligible for our funding
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| We ask if the applicant has had to isolate due to Covid-19 and if so, for you to provide the dates of their absence
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If they’ve had more than one period of isolation, please include dates of all absences | This information is key to validating what the applicant has told us and helps us determine if they meet the criteria |
- Please respond to our request within 3 working days; we know you’re very busy, but many of our applicants are desperate so the quicker we hear from you the faster we can process their application
- Please respond if we ask you to send us the required information from the organisation’s email address – we can’t verify information which is sent from a personal email address such as gmail or similar.
- Please do not leave any questions blank – we’ve kept the information required as short as possible and will need to contact you if you’ve not answered all the questions
Thank you for your help!