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Memorandum
from
Summary · Dudley's Supporting People Commissioning Body believes that the introduction of Supporting People Grant funding to assist in providing a better quality of life for vulnerable people and to promote independent living has, to a large extent, been successful in meeting its objectives. · It has been particularly effective in meeting the needs of vulnerable people whose low level housing related support needs would not ordinarily be met by way of receiving support from statutory services. · Dudley
was a pathfinder participant in the CLG's pilot prior to the removal of the Supporting
People funding ring-fence. · There are, however, opportunities and risks associated with un-ringfencing the Supporting People grant. We have already used the new financial flexibility to fund services that that add value to existing preventative services, for example, increased support to people in hostels and refuges that are experiencing mental ill-health. · There is a risk, however, that housing related support may be withdrawn from unpopular groups such as offenders as often, they do not attract the empathy of local communities and rarely have vociferous local champions for their cause.
1. Following
the publication of the Supporting People national strategy ' 2. Keeping people that need services at the heart of the programme - We believe that the emphasis on service user design and customer satisfaction has driven up service standards and innovation within services although there is still some way to go in delivering the individual budget service provision model. 3. Enhancing partnership with the Third Sector - We believe that the unringfencing of the Supporting People Grant may act to the detriment of third sector housing related support providers. Currently £4.2 million of our current investment in housing related support goes to a range of diverse third sector organisations to provide high quality, often specialist provision. We can no longer give the certainty of three year funding commitments to the organisations that the indicative grant level arrangements used to provide, as the amount dedicated to housing related support is now determined at the local level. The Supporting People Grant afforded us some certainty of the amount of money available to be spent on housing related support but in the un-ringfenced grant scenario housing related support has to compete with other local priorities, statutory services and budget pressures. 4. Delivering in the new local government landscape - There is a clear link between the preventative services that we provide and helping a range of agencies within the locality to deliver on shared targets and outcomes. We believe that housing related support services can directly contribute to meeting over 70% of the targets identified within the National Indicator set. 5. The development of the CLG national outcomes framework has also provided additional information to demonstrate which organisations are most effective in meeting a range of support needs, and in particular demonstrate areas of strengths and weaknesses. The introduction of the outcomes data collection has also demonstrated that agencies who work with a range of partners in order to deliver the outcomes, deliver better results. 6. Shared outcomes has also enabled us to develop joint commissioning work with social care and Primary Care Trust commissioners thus delivering more holistic and relevant services. 7. The strategy talks about considering the case for having a stronger statutory basis for Supporting People services and indicates that the proposal was not being actively considered at the point at which it was published. In order to maintain successful progress in meeting the needs of the vulnerable and socially excluded it would be helpful to identify within the area based grant the level of expenditure that should be dedicated to the 'prevention agenda' i.e. providing low level housing related support. 8. As funding decisions become more focussed on local strategic partnerships there are also fears that community representatives and elected members will be less likely to support funding proposals that meet the needs of socially excluded people or 'unpopular' client groups, for example, substance misusers and offenders because such decisions may impact on their local popularity and likelihood of being re-elected. 9. A clear strength of the Supporting People Grant structure was that there was a multi-agency partnership at the heart of the service commissioning process. This enabled partner agencies to work towards shared goals and to deliver services for groups who may or may not have popular/community support. There is a risk that local strategic partnerships are not sufficiently organised to take over or oversee the commissioning of services as their remit ranges widely from climate change to tackling crime. 10. Increasing efficiency and reducing bureaucracy - We believe that increased joint commissioning within our Borough and the cross authority commissioning that we are doing with neighbouring authorities is increasing efficiency and reducing bureaucracy. 11. Regional value for money benchmarking has been effective in assisting our understanding of service costs and aided negotiations with contractors. We would however, welcome some regional resource in order to ensure that this information is kept up to date. 12. Work to implement the revised Quality Assessment Framework is being embraced as a cross authority approach in order to increase consistency and reduce bureaucracy for service providers and service users. May 2009 |