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Memorandum from Southend on Sea Borough Council Supporting People Team (SPP 15)
The Supporting People Strategy looked at 4 themes which were:
Keeping people that need services at the heart of the programme Enhancing partnership with the Third Sector Delivering in the new local government landscape; and Increasing efficiency and reducing bureaucracy
We will attempt to give our feedback and current view on how locally we have achieved and developed in each of these areas. We would also like to note that we have discussed this regionally and we feel there needs to be a focus through the Corporate Area Assessments on the importance of housing support services if we are to ensure the longer term funding for these services across ALAs and there also needs to be a strong message from the CLG around what the Area Based Grant is for- this is to ensure that the un-ring-fencing of the SP Grant doesn't put SP services at risk in the short and long term.
As a region we would like it noted that through our regional strategy we are focusing on regional work around:
Raising the profile of SP Ensuring Supported Housing services meet future needs Securing access to housing support services for vulnerable people Supporting the development of shared practices across the region Ensuring supported housing services meet future demographic changes Ensuring service users have equal access to services across boundaries; and Support providers and service users to adapt to changes in models of services The attached response details the experience we have had in Southend over the past 2 years since our strategy was revised on a local level and also the work we are doing as a region in the East.
we aim to provide answers from our perspective on a number of areas.
The areas that we wish to focus on and feel are necessary are around:
The future limits around efficiency savings and the future funding for the programme Keeping people that need services at the heart of the programme Implications of removal of the ring-fence and what we feel are the risks and opportunities Ensuring future success and funding for services The future assessment of the SP programme through the CAA
We understand that there are other areas which the national Supporting People Strategy covers but we feel there is a need for us to focus our response on those key areas of development, for now and in the future, which affect Southend on Sea greatest.
Increasing Efficiency and Reducing Bureaucracy
We fully understand that one aspect of the implementation of SP was with regards to ensuring that services which were previously funded by HB were contracted and commissioned appropriately by the ALA. SP Teams inherited a range of services, which were of varying cost, quality, performance and strategic relevance. There has certainly been improvements made through Value for Money, de-commissioning of services (due to strategic irrelevance, poor quality, ineligible for SP funding etc) and this has certainly helped streamline services within Southend and improve value for money. We believe that we are now at a point where we have made efficiencies within the programme and joint contracting and commissioning in the future may bring about other smaller savings.
Although there may be small savings that could be realised in future we are also aware that most providers have not had inflationary uplifts for some years. In Southend we have had our programme grant capped since 2008 and this obviously means that offering inflationary uplifts would obviously involve reducing any savings we have made and which are earmarked for the commissioning priorities agreed for the next 2 years. We are at a point in the SP programme whereby both future needs and funding for current services cannot be sustained in tandem in all SP programmes and this needs to be an area which is looked at during future spending reviews.
The reduction of bureaucracy is something that is often relayed through national media and is something which is in practice hard to achieve in all cases. We have always worked with our providers on a local level to try and implement changes with as little disruption to the 'day job' as is physically possible. We are always going to be reviewing services and gathering information from providers whether it's in line with Accreditation, Performance, the QAF, Outcomes and/or documentation/paperwork. We feel we have struck a balance on a local level and are interested in the way that SP will be audited in future as the reviewing of SP programmes previously was very in-depth given the size of the programme when compared to other budgets and inspections within the Council. We can understand the need to embed a new programme and it obviously helps sell its importance but at the same time week long inspections and the submission of evidence can take some 6 months from start to finish and does take time away from the 'day job'.
It would be beneficial if the way that SP is inspected in future involved as little bureaucracy as is possible so that work on the ground can be the focus of the teams, especially given the ongoing reduction in administration grants and in some cases a reduction in team sizes. We are fortunate that our Council are topping up the funding but in other teams within the region this hasn't been possible and SP will therefore be at a greater risk in future.
Keeping people that need services at the heart of the programme
This has been touched on briefly above. We agree that this is paramount and has been since the SP programme came about. The main focus is to obviously commission services that meet the needs of vulnerable adults, especially where there are gaps in services or an increased demand for services for a particular client group. In Southend in the past 18 months we have re-tendered services which total a third of our programme grant and this is bringing about both efficiencies and increased provision within Southend.
We have recognised the needs for an increase in floating support
services but also the ongoing funding of accommodation based services which
deliver a high number of outcomes based on the
Keeping service users at the heart of the programme has also been seen in Southend as a driving force for service user involvement in all the work that the SP team undertakes. This is something which has been a focus in the past 2 years and is now reaping benefits and is providing good practice to other partners within the council and the borough. At present service users are involved in peer reviewing. Service user consultation visits, the CSG and CB, reviewing of strategies, documents, leaflets, promotional materials and are receiving training and workshops to develop their capacity to become involved. In Southend this has been developed through having a Service User Involvement Officer within the team who has refreshed the strategy and is working with the service user panel to deliver the agreed priorities.
Implications of Removal of the Ring-fence
This is the big question that is being banded about at present as no one knows exactly how it will pan out and the implications will differ from area to area depending on how high SP is on the local agenda.
In Southend we feel the programme has made great strides within the last 2 years and because of this and the corporate commitment to the programme and the outcomes that it achieves we feel that un-ring-fencing of the grant is already providing us with ways of providing support to vulnerable adults through innovative services such as tenancy sustainment courses, joint funding opportunities with the DAAT team, long-term advocacy funding (Domestic Violence) and other services which may require funding support in the longer-term.
The aim of un-ring-fencing will be to provide flexibility in how the grant is spent to meet the local needs. In Southend we are fortunate that NI 142 has been agreed as one of the corporate priorities but as well as this we also affect 20 of the 35 key priorities as listed in the Local Area Agreement. This is the message we are putting across to providers, partners and stakeholders and is why we feel that funding for SP services will remain in the long-term and we feel could also attract funding from other partners in the attempt to deliver shared outcomes and targets.
In saying this we also feel as a region that other Local Authorities are not seeing SP as high on the agenda and in these cases there is concern that long-term funding could be an issue and the repercussions of this may not be fully felt until it is too late. As SP teams we are responsible for selling the story but in areas where the administration grant continues to be cut and where council contributions are nil or negligible there is a danger that the story of SP and the benefits to vulnerable adults could be lost.
Future Success and Funding for Services
Many aspects of this have been addressed above. In addition to the points raised above we would also like to put the point forward that SP Teams are finding the financing of the programmes increasingly difficult given the capping or reductions of the programme and administration grants.
At a time when the SP programmes are been given increased flexibility there are many, including ourselves that are experiencing a decrease in administration funding from the CLG and a capping of programme grant. It is hard to understand that when there is much said about the cost benefits of the programme that money continues to be cut from the delivery of the programme. The result of this would be that some areas would have to reduce their programme, reduce their commissioning/contracting activities and it would lead to an increase need for high cost services as costed by Cap Gemini. Both arguments do not seem to hold true if we are saying how beneficial the programme is with one hand and then cutting funding with the other. SP Teams realise that by placing the Administration grant into the Area Based Grant in 2010 as well as the recent HIA handyperson grant funding- this is the CLG's way of saying 'In the longer term this will have to be picked up at the local level as we (CLG) will cease funding'
We feel that CLG need to be clearer with Council areas as to what the Area Based Grant will be expected to deliver and the repercussions of councils just seeing a pool of funding that can be applied in a number of ways. In Southend we are a unitary and find it easier in some ways to keep everyone's priorities on the agenda but I imagine in 2-tier councils managing this process will be a lot more difficult.
Future Assessment of SP through the CAA
In Southend we have experienced 3 inspections since 2003 and the recent inspection highlighted the progress we had made locally and the direction in which we were travelling. Obviously continuous improvement remains high on the agenda in Southend and we still set our aims towards achieving Excellence based on the revised 2008 KLOEs for the SP programme.
Now that the inspection regime has been streamlined through the CAA we understand that SP will become part of the overall corporate inspection rather than having its own inspection as it has over the last 5-6 years.
We feel that the CLG need to be clear as to how SP will be assessed given the recent recommendations that some teams will have (those that have been re-inspected in 2008/9). We will continue to work to delivers the recommendations and deliver where we feel we don't yet achieve excellence against the KLOEs but it would be helpful to have a cleat steer as to how SP will contribute to the CAA.
We feel that we will become part of the assessment around how vulnerable adults are supported within the borough and the outcomes that are delivered in-line with the LAA priorities and NI dataset but further verification would be helpful.
Please note that these are the views expressed by the SP Team and not the Council as a whole. If you wish to ask any other questions or wish us to clarify any points then please feel free to contact us.
May 2009 |