One year on from its launch, the Conference and Training Care Fund Guidance has been reviewed by the Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Board to make sure it is meeting your needs and achieving its goals.

Set up as an Athena Swan initiative to support career development for those with caring responsibilities for children, elderly relatives or other dependents, this fund enables you to claim back additional care costs incurred as a result of attending work related training and development events, in much the same way as you might for necessary travel costs and/or accommodation.

In response to initial uptake, the EDI Board has agreed two major changes to the scope of the guidance:

• It now includes internal development events, run by or at the University, as well as external ones. This may be particularly relevant if you need to attend internal conferences or courses on non-working days, or if you need to make additional arrangements to allow for earlier starts or later finishes than your normal working day.
• It now includes international events, not only those in the UK. This may be particularly relevant if you are looking to take part in development activities on our international campuses or attend a conference for professional development which is taking place overseas.

Authorisation is required by your line manager or appropriate budget holder, or through existing local conference/training approval routes, before a claim is submitted through Concur. Additional care must be provided by a registered care provider to ensure that this can be claimed as a non-taxable expense. Eligible activity includes training courses, development events and conferences. It should be noted that if you are speaking or presenting a paper at a conference this may not qualify – to be eligible the majority of the time at the conference or event must be spent on development activities, rather than in fulfilling normal work activity.

You can find the updated guidance, associated flowchart and authorisation form on the Conference and Training Care Fund webpage.

For further queries about the Conference and Training Care Fund please contact pd@nottingham.ac.uk.