Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 205)
MONDAY 29 JUNE 2009
MR PETER
RUSH AND
MR GREG
ROBERTS
Q200 Anne Main: It might be intuitive,
but is it easy to make the economic argument when you are arguing
for that budget to be expanded potentially?
Mr Roberts: I am not sure it is.
On a scheme that we recently opened, the people who moved in there
are costing about £300 a week. One of them was in residential
care costing £1,200 a week out of borough. So the figures
are there.
Mr Rush: I think a lot of the
things that we are talking about around Supporting People come
back to the strength of the local partnerships, and as Greg has
said, if you can demonstrate the savings, if you can demonstrate
the overall benefits, then that is the way that I think we can
protect the programme. The so-called unpopular groups which are
commonly referred to, this was mentioned around ex-offenders,
we have developed some new services to meet those needs because
we have actually been able to demonstrate that new ways of working
will reduce benefits. As Supporting People becomes more aligned
within the local area agreement, we are making great efforts to
demonstrate to our colleagues working around the crime and disorder
reduction partnership that Supporting People services played a
key agenda there in shaping the communities in which people live,
and making sure that anti-social behaviour and offending behaviour,
that there are ways of dealing with that. I am not saying we have
the answers to everything, but I think it is demonstrating that
wider benefit that Supporting People services can play, and it
gets back to the first question, which was about other Government
agencies and agendas recognising the role that Supporting People
will play, and that can protect the unpopular groups.
Q201 Anne Main: So is the comprehensive
area assessment going to be robust enough to identify where housing-related
support is not being delivered effectively then?
Mr Roberts: I think if the people
that are doing the assessments know where to look and know what
they are looking for.
Q202 Anne Main: How do they know
where to look?
Mr Roberts: There needs to be
a clear strategic framework in place, so the authority can demonstrate
the links between their strategies for all the principal client
groups and how housing-related support fits into that. There needs
to be a clear commissioning framework, so where a decision is
taken around the commissioning procurement of these services,
there needs to be a clear contract monitoring framework; how do
you actually know, as an authority, what is going on in these
projects, and how do the outcomes of those individuals actually
feed into your targets. I think if the inspection regime becomes
about looking at those national indicators and seeing whether
or not you are in the top quartile, the middle quartile, the bottom
quartile, that becomes too blunt.
Mr Rush: I think the focus on
outcomes is something where we can demonstrate the value of Supporting
People services, and should hit the agenda. I think there is an
issue, CAA is something that is untried to a large extent, and
especially in a two tier authority, one comprehensive area assessment
that assesses all aspects of the performance of Hampshire County
Council, the eleven district and borough councils, Hampshire NHS,
the police and fire authority there, it is asking a lot of one
assessment to pick up on the nuances of one particular programme
without falling back on a crude measure of how are you doing against
the national indicators, and I think there is a danger there that
it needs to delve beneath the surface and look at the impact that
has been had on the place-shaping.
Q203 Anne Main: Both you and Mr Roberts
have used the words blunt and crude. Are there any refinements
you could suggest to the tool to ensure that this blunt, crude
and not exactly focused approach is made better?
Mr Rush: I suppose coming at it
from the perspective where Supporting People services have previously
been looked at in depth, and there were inspections, the Commission's
inspection of Supporting People in Hampshire lasted a week, knowing
the resources that are going into the overall assessment of all
the services in Hampshire, I think that is the problem. I think
it is just a change of approach, and you have to ask the question
whether the whole set-up of—whether we have to recognise
that things have changed, from the way things are done, in the
sense that previous inspections, both of local authorities under
the CPA process, and individual areas of service such as Supporting
People, could go into a lot more detail, but that that is one
of the issues that has gone with the new approach.
Anne Main: I am still not a lot wiser,
but I am hoping Mr Roberts—
Q204 Chair: I think what is being
said is that if you try to reduce the amount of direction from
the centre, and therefore reduce the numbers of performance indicators,
you inevitably finish up with a blunter system. You cannot have
a refined system without lots and lots of performance indicators.
Is that what you are saying, essentially?
Mr Roberts: Yes, if you just concentrate
on a performance indicator, then it will be too blunt and too
crude. If you concentrate on outcomes, and to be honest on part
of the process side and the strategy side and the joined-upness
of the commissioning process, then it becomes much more reasonable,
and if the inspectors are able to draw on the enormous amount
of information they have from having inspected every single authority
through Supporting People, then it is worthwhile. I think there
is also an onus on the local authorities, as part of their submission,
to make sure that supported housing services have got a high profile
in their submission, so there is a paragraph in our CAA submission
about how we have opened these services and improved outcomes
for rough sleepers, et cetera, delivering value for money, all
those kinds of issues, so there is something for the inspectors
to work on.
Q205 Anne Main: Is part of the problem
the fact that, as Mr Rush said earlier on, a lot of these things
are like a slow burn, and you are only going to know quite a few
years down the line if you stop more offending or anti-social
behaviour, once the system has bedded down and been in place for
a while, and that person has been more integrated in the community,
just talking about perhaps ex-offenders. So is that part of the
problem, that you are looking at something a long way off?
Mr Rush: That is part of the problem.
Under the Supporting People inspection process, this is the point
I was trying to make, it was not so much the performance indicators,
when the inspectors came and looked at how the Supporting People
services were doing, they had the time and the opportunity to
go out and talk to a number of service users, they had the time
to go out and visit a number of individual services, so they could
see, so they could identify that slow process of improvement in
outcome that has been made for individuals. With the process that
we are talking about now, there is the danger, and I think that
is the point that we are sort of making, that there is a danger
with it being a much higher level process, and much shorter in
time, taking fewer resources, that that would be lost.
Chair: Can I thank you both very much,
I think we have to move on to the next witnesses. Thank you very
much indeed.
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