SUMMARY
Summary
There is much to celebrate in the work of CLG, local authorities and their partners in delivering the Supporting People programme. The programme has been instrumental in supporting the needs of some of most vulnerable and socially excluded members of society and delivers savings to the Exchequer of £3.4 billion for a £1.6 billion investment per annum. The quality of partnership working under the regime—which has led to the creation of many innovative and person-centred services—is widely recognised, and is regarded as an excellent blueprint for future partnership working in many areas of local service delivery.
Despite the many successes of the programme to date, our inquiry comes at a time when a degree of uncertainty hangs over the future of Supporting People. We acknowledge concern amongst our witnesses about the loss of the 'protective' ringfence on Supporting People funds, particularly in the current economic climate. Many of the issues we highlight in our report are compounded by witnesses' uncertainty about the future impact of changes to the funding regime. It is clear to us that transparency from local authorities in the way Supporting People services are funded, and a continued commitment by the Government to three-year funding settlements for local authorities, will continue to be critical in the future.
Our report considers how well the Government has delivered against its commitments in the 2007 Supporting People Strategy. We believe that progress has been good overall, although there are some areas in which more rapid progress, or greater clarification as to how objectives will be achieved, is needed. Two major issues stand out to us as requiring a much more immediate and concentrated focus: the burden of the competitive tendering regime for Supporting People services; and the lack of clarity as to the future of accommodation-based services for older people.
Alongside changes in the Supporting People funding regime, the wider local government landscape is going through considerable transformation, with the development of Local Area Agreements and a change in the performance regime with the advent of Comprehensive Area Assessment. Whilst we wholeheartedly support a less target-based inspection regime and moves to devolve decision making about local service provision to the local level, vulnerable people must not lose out as local authorities and their partners grapple with tightening budgets and the challenges of delivering services in a multi-agency environment. We are concerned that mechanisms to ensure service users' involvement in decision-making may be lost—and go unnoticed in inspection—and that Third Sector organisations, which have a wealth of knowledge and expertise about the needs of vulnerable people, could also be overlooked or put under undue pressure as local authorities focus too heavily on the cost of providing services, as opposed to considerations of quality.
We are concerned at reports that the needs of some groups are still unmet, and we have particular concerns about service users who are 'transient' and may rely on services being joined up across local authority boundaries. We recommend that CLG redouble its efforts to encourage local authorities to identify need and plan services together. We also recommend that housing-related support be specifically referenced in new guidance for joint strategic needs assessments for social care and health.
The Supporting People programme has led to the development of some excellent management tools such as the Quality Assessment and Outcomes Frameworks. The programme has also promoted robust governance, decision making and user involvement structures. We conclude that the loss of any of these developments would be a serious risk to the future of housing-related support. The Outcomes Framework in particular, which is able to show how service users' needs have been met, must be retained to help build a much-needed evidence base to show which kind of interventions are best able to meet service users' needs.
In the absence of any statutory footing for, or precise definition of, housing-related support, we discuss how central government departments need to be more proactive in identifying how their services contribute to the delivery of housing-related support. We see local authorities being expected to deliver services in complex partnership arrangements with a clear focus on outcomes, but the example is not always being set by central government departments. We are encouraged by the recent Social Care Green Paper, Shaping the Future of Care Together, which has been helpful in underlining the need to bring housing, health and social care together. This is a positive move, but greater efforts are still needed from CLG to continue to raise the profile of Supporting People services, particularly in the absence of a ringfence to contain the Supporting People 'brand'.
|
|
|
