Memorandum from Endeavour Housing Association (SSP 03)

 

Summary

 

SP appears to have met the broad aims for which it was established

there are many excellent individual examples of the impact the programme has had on the lives of service users,

the encouragement and support for service user involvement has put service users at the heart of the programme in many areas.

the third sector has been empowered to engage more fully with the local authority, particularly in areas where active provider forums are encouraged and supported

the sector has become more focussed on achieving positive outcomes for it's service users and promoting independence.

 

However this has come at a price:

the reduction of bureaucracy has not always been achieved.

The value of services are not always recognised locally

Contract prices have not followed inflation which is endangering the provision of quality services.

Inconsistency across local authorities means that the aims have been achieved in some areas but not in others.

Targets have forced the sector to focus upon outcomes but there are still people slipping through the nets because the targets can be applied too inflexibly.

 

Evidence

 

We work within 12 LA areas and are often meeting 12 different sets of expectations and monitoring requirements. This has got worse since the Government gave responsibility of administering SP to individual LA's. The sector is now awash with monitoring and administration. In one area we are having to count and report every 15 minutes of support given to each individual service user and account for reasons if the support hours go over a certain number of hours per week. This often detracts from the provision of delivering flexible, tailored support. Some more joined up thinking across regions would at least help with this. The new QAF framework which aims to be more innovative and open to interpretation will introduce even further inconsistencies across local authorities since already a 'C' in one area is classed as an 'A' in another.

It is also worth noting that for most providers they directly meet the cost of increased wage bills and expenditure with no annual increase and an expectation that within the sector that this is ok. There can be poor understanding by SP Teams of the depth of services often being delivered on a shoe string.  We have one service which we receive £15k a year from and have had no increase since SP was introduced in 2003. The actual cost of us delivering the service is over £20k yet SP still want to cut the amount of funding. We deliver another service used as a national model of good practice by the D o H in which we deliver for £35k p.a, again have received no increase in 8 years. The DoH state we save the public purse in excess of £300k p.a, The SP team assess the service as high cost.

Once the ring fence is lifted and area based grants become a reality there is a real risk regarding the potential impact on the sector. Many local authorities still do not really understand supporting people and compare the costs against those delivered by 'care' services. It would be helpful to have some sort of national guidance on this to ensure that the sector is not destabilised.

Some local authorities engage in genuine dialogue with providers and the third sector whereas in others this has not happened. In the areas where active provider forms are encouraged the local authority teams seem to build up a genuine understanding of the services and the needs of the service users. In other areas it appears that the contract price is the overriding driving force - regardless of the quality of the service provided.

Services are 'pigeon holed' into short or long term and in some cases there is not enough flexibility in this, target driven LAA's are aggravating this pressure. This means that people with more complex needs are not always at the centre of the programme, support has to close too early and there are not enough longer term support options. This means that people are falling through the net and the time and money invested in them can be wasted due to lack of follow-on support.

LAA targets for positive move-on can also be counter productive. In some cases these targets can force providers and local authorities to cherry pick services and service users to ensure that they are meeting positive move-on targets which are well in excess of 90%. What then happens to the people who need support and may well benefit from receiving that support but are a high risk for not achieving a positive move-on?

The personalisation agenda is emerging and we are following this with interest particularly around our services for learning disabilities in shared facilities. If several different providers are supporting these service users we see potential for abuse and a lack of responsibility for the overall health and safety of the service. We are aware that the local authorities themselves are working this out at the moment but we are starting to see a reluctance to commission services because of the personalisation agenda and this could impact on the most vulnerable service users who need placements.

 

May 2009