Memorandum from Doncaster Supporting People
Provider Forum
1. What are the benefits of contestabilty
to the users of public services?
(a) Have services which have been transferred
to third sector organisations shown improvements in quality?
Supporting People services "grew up"
in the third sector rather than being transferred from the public
sector. The Quality Assurance Framework (QAF) against which providers
are assessed should ensure improvement in quality.
(b) Is loss of accountability a threat of
commissioning services? If so, how can this best be managed?
This is not our experience. We would certainly
argue that are services are as, or more, accountable to "stakeholders",
often statutory services, than the statutory services themselves.
The level of scrutiny of some elements of the contract, particularly
regarding finance, is much more akin to monitoring of grant aid
rather than what one may expect from a contract. We would certainly
argue that the third sector is more accountable to its users than
many statutory services.
2. Is the third sector more likely to provide
better public services than the state or the private sector?
(a) Is there evidence that where services
are provided by the third sector, that they are popular with those
that use them?
We collect feedback from clients that suggest
that the services we offer are popular with those that use them.
Users are also consulted by commissioners as part of the service
review process so it is possible to independently verify this.
(b) Is there evidence of demand for more services
to be provided by the third sector? If so, who from?
Referrals to Supporting People services outstrip
service provision. Demand comes from a number of statutory services,
housing, health, probation—as well as potential service
users who in some services have a "direct route" in
to services.
Because there is no statutory definition of
who is eligible for a service (which we consider undesirable given
complex needs of our service users), voluntary organisations are
often in the position of "gatekeepers" regarding who
has access to their services.
There can often be conflict between the priorities
of statutory services and needs of potential service users which
will generally manifest itself to service providers in the first
instance.
There is a danger that, in contracting with
the statutory sector for services, that the commissioning requirements
are skewed towards the dominant statutory culture, in how the
contract is specified, and in how it will be monitored and judged.
This would be a shame, as some of the unique aspects of the voluntary
sector culture would then be lost, and we need to avoid becoming
"shadow" statutory sector providers.
(c) Do public services provided by the third
sector more accurately reflect the changing needs of those that
use them?
We would contend that in the sphere of supported
housing and related services our sector has been responsive and
innovative in responding to the changing needs of service uses—hence
the adoption of the Supporting People programme by government.
The biggest danger in third sector commissioning,
is that the process has the potential for us to lose our major
advantage of flexibility and responsiveness to need, and our ability
to be accountable to, and often act as advocates for, service
users.
(d) Is there evidence that contracting to
the third sector leads to greater scope for innovation in public
service delivery?
It is difficult to innovate in a contract culture
that has a tendency to micro—manage service delivery. We
would contend this has largely been a fact in supported housing
for the last 3-4 years.
3. Does commissioning benefit the third sector?
(a) Will contractual relationships with the
state improve stability within the third sector?
It is our hope that having contracts in place
will improve stability. Certainly the recent experience with DMBC
saw a situation where those organisations perceived as receiving
grants were seen as easy targets for the withdrawal of funding.
Organisations with contracts were in a more secure position when
that happened. We have operated for too long on short term funding
which leaves insufficient time for services to establish their
viability in the eyes of the commissioners, and which leaves clients
high and dry at the end of the funding period.
It needs to be recognised that often the commissioning
(and contractual payment) will only be for part of an integrated
service. Thus in supported housing with allied care services an
organisation may be providing "housing", "housing
related support", and "care" to a service user.
To the user this is a seamless service. To the provider this may
mean commissioners/contracts for "housing related support"
and "care", access to benefits for "housing",
regulation by the Housing Corporation and inspection by the Audit
Commission for the "housing" element if the provider
is a Registered Social Landlord, CSCI regulation/inspection for
the "care" element, and service review by the Administering
Authority for the supported housing element.
There can often be a "mismatch" of
funding between the different income streams, and increasingly
third sector providers are either cross subsidising services or,
more often, using reserves / donations to fund deficits from contracts.
The state needs to recognise the comparative
lack of infrastructure within the third sector to manage the demands
of a contract culture when compared to statutory services and
the general unwillingness of commissioners to fund what they would
see as "overhead" costs.
(b) Will close involvement with service provision
prevent third sector organisations retaining the ability to be
critical of government?
At a national level this should not be a problem.
At local level, from experience this can often depend on individual
commissioners. Some will accept constructive criticism as a sign
of a robust and healthy dialogue, others may take a more negative
view.
(c) Is there a risk that the service providers
will become increasingly bureaucratic?
To quote a manager of a Doncaster service:
"Good grief yes! We are finding that the
paperwork requirements of the systems that we work in impact on
the level of service we can provide. They are tedious beyond belief.
Contracting, tendering and monitoring to external contract conditions
has certainly impacted on the time I have available to spend with
staff in discussing the quality of the work they are doing".
Please see also the response to 3(a) with regard
to the plethora of different and divergent regulation of the sector.
(d) Is there a risk that third sector organisations
will lose their independence, their identity or their distinctive
ethos?
We do not want to become quasi statutory sector
providers, we want to provide complementary services to the statutory
sector that increases the range of what can be offered to clients.
We hope that our values are shared by commissioners. Many of us
entered the "third sector" —a real risk in terms
of pay, conditions of service (especially pensions)—in order
to try to make a qualitative difference for service users rather
than a career for ourselves.
(e) Might the third sector become polarised
between large service providing organisations and more radical
groups? If so, would this matter?
Within the supported housing sector we would
argue that the needs of service users are paramount and that providers
should be capable of managing this and not providing a "one
size fits all service". The sector, in order to be an effective
advocate for service users, must always be allowed to offer robust,
constructive criticism to commissioners/regulators/inspectors.
4. Does commissioning services from the third
sector have any benefits for the state?
(a) Does the state risk losing control of
service delivery in a way which might be damaging?
We would say a resounding no! It highlights
the fundamental issue of trust between service commissioner and
provider. There is an issue of increasing the time spent in liaison
where different elements of a service are spread over several
service providers, but this is not insuperable, and it should
not be assumed that where all service provision is within the
statutory sector there is automatically easier or better liaison
between different departments.
As previously stated we would contend our sector
is closer and more responsive to needs of service users than most
statutory services.
(b) What capacity will the state need to ensure
that it can be an intelligent customer of services?
Surely the state is a commissioner rather than
a customer?
(c) How is duplication of effort in order
to monitor and manage contracts best avoided?
From our experience of the Supporting People
programme, greater passporting of accreditation systems would
be useful. We have seen in Supporting People that different authorities
are unwilling to accept each other's systems, and we are not convinced
that this is always about believing other people's systems have
inadequacies. There seems to be an element of protectionism towards
one's own systems. It is time consuming when different contracts
within our services are monitored using different quality systems,
so that we are operating several different systems within the
organisation.
(d) How good is the state at managing bidding
processes and defining contractual obligations when commissioning
services?
From the experience of our sector, a steep learning
curve for the state is required, similar to the one we've experienced
as providers. The "market" is still very immature and
there appears to be an increasing tendency from commissioners
to follow procurement routes more suitable for the purchase of
office equipment rather than a service that puts users at the
core.
To quote from the experience of a service manager
in Doncaster:
"There is tremendous variability in the
statutory sector's ability to manage the contracting process.
Some contracts are very clear and tight, others are practically
meaningless. I have seen instances where the contractor's lack
of knowledge of the sector has meant that the contract is ambiguous
about what is to be delivered, how it is to be monitored, or how
the contract activity should be defined. Constant changes in staffing
within the statutory sector means that there is very little continuity
in terms of commissioners having solid knowledge of the third
sector, and the services that we are providing. This means that
we are constantly in a situation where we are spending time explaining
how we work, and the services we provide, to those who are tasked
with commissioning them. This is not a comment on the competence
of those commissioning services, but on the time they have available
to get to grips with the workings of what is a diverse sector.
I don't suppose this only applies to the alcohol field, either".
5. What are the financial implications of
providing services through the third sector compared with directly
provided state services?
(a) Are services cheaper to provide?
We would contend that the third sector adds
value to services it provides rather than simply providing "cheaper"
services—that is not our role. From experience we are subject
to the same value for money regime as local government and often
subject to a mindset that deems we are more capable of absorbing
cost pressures than statutory services (who are our commissioners!).
(b) Are there "hidden costs" such
as contract oversight?
Please see response to question 3, paragraphs
2 and 3.
(c) Are the benefits of the third sector participation
in public service provision so great that it is appropriate to
have financial rules which encourage this, or should the aim be
to have "competitive neutrality" between public, private
and voluntary sectors?
The third sector is still in its infancy regarding
its role as providing state commissioned services and as such
is still in need of nuturing and developing. The capacity and
infrastructure of the third sector is in need of building/developing
eg access to legal services to scrutinise contracts.
6. Are the costs and benefits to the state
the same when commissioned from the third and private sectors?
This is virtually impossible to answer. The
third sector and the private sector cannot be considered as discrete
entities. Both sectors are large, diverse, and there is considerable
overlap making it difficult to generalise about their respective
costs and benefits. You would have to look at individual organisations
in each sector.
February 2007
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