Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
220-269)
Harry Fowler, Brendan O'Keefe, Garath Symonds and
David Wright
9 March 2011
Q220 Chair: Gentlemen—I
see it is all gentlemen—thank you very much for coming to
give evidence to us this morning. Some of you heard the evidence
in the last session. One thing that we did not touch on was whether
we can change the system altogether to one of payment by results
and whether that might change the attitude to youth work. If councils
had a broad range of outcomes for their young people that they
had to deliver, would they then commission youth services in a
different fashion and perhaps, because they were closer to the
front line, need to spend less time worrying about measuring data
but ensure that it was part of what they felt was a coherent overall
package to deliver the happy, fully developed and well educated
young people that society wants and we want for our children?
Brendan, any thoughts on whether the incentive mechanisms for
local authorities could help change and improve focus in the delivery
of youth work?
Brendan O'Keefe: I would be very
happy with a payment-by-results approach to funding youth services
as part of the overall package. There are risks for any organisation
going into a payment-by-results domain, depending on the payment
schedule. If all your costs are up front and you don't get paid
back because you have failed, you have a bankrupt business and
you have to pay that money back in some way. As a youth service
that regularly achieves and shows good outcomes, we are happy
with the concept and are actively seeking that form of funding
in future.
Q221 Chair: So such are the savings
to society if you minimise the negative aspects that it is actually
possible to fund on the current basis and then provide payment
by results on top of that?
Brendan O'Keefe: That's right.
Q222Chair: So it is a win-win for society
overall and a win for a local authority that pioneers and shows
that it can deliver a package of services including youth services.
Any thoughts on that, Garath?
Garath Symonds: We have just let
a contract to move young people who are NEET into apprenticeships.
We are paying the agency only when it gets the young person into
an apprenticeship. That, for me, is the pure sense of payment
by results. I think the idea of commissioning, decommissioning
and recommissioning based on performance is sound; it is not quite
the same thing but very similar. There is an issue around data.
If you are basing your decision on whether to pay on data, sometimes
they do not tell the whole story and you have to understand and
analyse them in order to make an informed decision.
Q223 Chair: We have spent a number
of sessions finding out how difficult it is to capture and measure
the outcomes of various youth services. Payment by results does
not mean that you necessarily have to apply it to the deliverer
of those services. As long as it applies to you and you believe,
you commission the service and whether you bother to collect data
on it or not, you are looking at the quality of the service as
an overall service. Sometimes people think that every little voluntary
group will have to justify itself and whether it delivers some
data which it has to capture before it gets any money. That is
not really what it is about. David, any thoughts on payment by
results?
David Wright: I broadly welcome
it in the way that colleagues have already said. The other issue,
which resonates back with the previous session, is how you measure
those outcomes and how you pay for the positive aspects of the
services that are being delivered. It is relatively easy, which
is why we have seen stuff around youth PSA, for example, to measure
deficit indicators. We talk about NEET and we talk about teenage
pregnancy, but it is much more difficult to move on to measuring
the positive outcomes there. One of the things that we need to
do if we go down the route of payment by results is look at the
opportunities to use some of the structures that have not been
highlighted—things like recorded outcomes and accreditations
that young people receive. That starts to shift the balance away
from the deficit model and towards creating an overall positive
direction in services. I was struck by what you said about actually
having a basket of indicators over five years. That starts to
make it possible to identify and measure that work and to evaluate,
support and reward what is good. On that basis, you need the infrastructure
and the targets, and then you need the local structures to be
able to commission efficiently and effectively.
Q224 Chair: Whenever I think of
payment by results, I always think of Birmingham. I have this
fantasy vision of the money streams that you have coming in at
the moment joining a partnership with a major financial behemoth
to bring in extra money, so that you have a plan and a programme
of evidence-based interventions to deliver the basket of outcomes,
which could then mean additional funding for Birmingham and massive
benefit for the nation. That basket would deal with positives
and negatives, but it would, for instance, look to drive down
convictions of young men aged 20 who have a criminal conviction
to a lower percentage. There would be several baskets. If it was
delivered like that, if the money could be brought in, and if
the existing funding flows were there, is there a way that Birmingham
city council could partner with others and deliver a transformation
of outcomes for young people—both positive and eliminating
the negative?
Harry Fowler: I'm sure that there
is. Do you know the name of that behemoth that you were talking
about? We would like to know.
Q225 Chair: I was going to mention
Goldman Sachs. I would like to see whether a financial organisation
could go to the markets and bring in £2 billion over a 20-year
period to work with you with points along the way. We could then
suddenly stop challenging every local voluntary organisation to
produce data on itself, because, when you were delivering that
picture, it would obvious. I don't ask questions about data when
my children go to something that is clearly positive. I would
just value it, send it and make it happen. I might hold some people
to payments by results, but others I would not. It would be driven
by someone close to the front line. Would you be suitable?
Harry Fowler: Yes. The option
that we're exploring in Birmingham at the moment around alternative
providers is slightly different from that. We are actually looking
at going the other way towards the smaller, locally based community
groups, and we are seeing whether we can broker and develop new
partnerships with smaller local groups. I suppose that the danger
is that you replace one large bureaucracy with another large bureaucracy.
We are trying to avoid that. At the moment, we are exploring the
possibility of at least 34 of our smaller youth clubs and youth
provisions being taken on by local people. The plea, however,
would be for time for that to happen. To build the infrastructure
and broker those partnerships takes time. We have examples of
where we have handed over fairly large facilities to the voluntary
sector, and they now run them, but what we have learnt from that
is that you can never withdraw fully. You always need to have
some sort of investment in the project. As I said, it takes time.
Two to three years is the normal period of time.
Q226 Bill Esterson: Just following
up on that, we have talked a lot over the past hour and quarter
or so about measurement. The one thing that keeps coming up is
the issue of the most vulnerable groups and how to reach them.
This picks up on what you were just saying, Graham. This is surely
about ensuring that those vulnerable young people are reached
rather than worrying too much about the measurement. As Damian
said earlier, "Discuss".
David Wright: One of the key things
is being able to identify. That is one of the real values. In
the first session, you asked whether things are better or worse
now. One of the arguments for saying that things are better is
that there is a much closer relationship between youth services
and other children's services providers in trying to identify,
support and target the young people. That requires data investment
and sharing of intelligence. The structures that are there allow
that to happen.
In that process, however, we must avoid bureaucratisation.
It almost becomes an add-on. We must try to emphasise the responsibility
of—I would suggest—the local authority to be able
to identify those young people that it needs to support and target,
but to do that with its partners and have the greatest influence
over the diminishing resources. I talked to someone from the Association
of Chief Police Officers recently and they recognised that the
budget reductions in policing mean that if they are going to talk
about early intervention, they need to have clear data and information
to be able to target and to make the best use of the resources
that are available.
Q227 Bill Esterson: So the right data
and information, and not being overly bureaucratic?
David Wright: Yes. And the other
side of the trust issue is that local authorities are getting
sophisticated at being able to identify those risk factors, to
identify the families and to provide that level of support. Youth
work is not aside from that. It has an important contribution
to make.
Brendan O'Keefe: If youth work
can't attract and find the right people, what is the job for?
That would be my question. In my own service, I can see on a daily
basis that we are open to challenge in the most radical circumstances.
Just to give an example of how that plays for us, we have several
contracts with our own PCT to deliver services to very vulnerable
young people, because the PCT openly admits that it finds it very
difficult to attract those people to clinic and hospital-based
services. So those services are contracted through youth services.
So it can be done and to good effect.
Harry Fowler: I can think of some
very good examples of where other professionals can work in youth
service settings: midwives; neighbourhood advisers; Connexions
PAs; youth offending colleagues, and police officers. They work
in youth centres and in a youth work context, so that that universal
provision is offered and so that the most vulnerable young people
are fed into it. It works within that broader setting.
It is about building on those examples and perhaps
becoming more formalised and moving towards a more case-based
approach. That is a culture change for youth workers, but I think
that that is part of what they will need to do. They will need
to work on a type of case basis within a universal setting. The
challenge that we are facing at the moment is how we make that
cultural shift.
Garath Symonds: Listening to the
academics earlier, I felt that there was a bit of a rub between
this idea of implementing social policy and achieving outcomes,
which we want to achieve as a society, and delivering quality
youth work. My view is that all young people need youth work,
all young people need support for the transition from childhood
to adolescence and into adulthood, and all young people need work
around their identity and that sort of support that youth work
offers universally or generically.
However, there is a difference between that
work and using youth work to achieve social outcomes or policy
objectives. In my view, you can do both. With vulnerable young
people, we can do both. We can say, "Okay, we want to improve
school attendance and one of the ways that we will do that is
by managing this cohort of young people who are attending poorly
at school and we will use youth work as the intervention."
But it is about making a distinction between two things—when
is youth work a universal thing that any young person can walk
into a youth club and access, and when is it a tool to achieve
a policy objective?
Q228 Bill Esterson: I'm sure that
we could explore that in a lot of detail. Can we move on to the
new financial settlement? Can we start with what you are providing
at the moment, what the age groups are and what proportion of
the 13 to 19 population are using those services?
Harry Fowler: In terms of our
youth service budget in Birmingham, the percentage of directorate
budget—that is the children, young people and families directorate
budget—is about 2%, perhaps a little less. The percentage
of the overall local authority budget is less than 0.5%.
Then there are the numbers of young people who
use the service currently. We have stayed with the previous targets—the
raised targets—so we have adhered to the previous benchmarks
that were set under the resourcing excellent youth service standards,
and we still aspire to meet them. This year so far, of the 100,000
or so young people in the 13 to 19 age range, we have reached—echoing
Howard's point earlier—nearly 15,000 of them, so about 15%,
and nearly 11,000 of those have become registered regular participants.
Q229 Bill Esterson: What services
are you providing?
Harry Fowler: It's a youth service
at the moment—the youth service management information system
for 13 to 19-year-olds. We run a range of projects, about 60 different
projects across the city, including what I suppose are large,
fairly traditional open-access youth centres. We also have four
information projects, detached teams and targeted projects aimed
at young people who are unemployed, alongside Connexions. We have
a C-card scheme that is based around young people's sexual health.
We run sports programmes and we work with the police on Friday
and Saturday night schemes, on preventing violent extremism schemes
and on guns and gangs schemes. So there is quite a range. We
did some statistics a couple of years ago—they are a bit
out of date now. Of the percentage of youth workers engaged in
open-access youth work, it was down to about 50 or 60%. I suspect
that if we had done it 10 years earlier it would have been 90%.
So many more of our staff now are far more diverse in the range
of projects and their delivery. We have four centres on school
sites or in schools, as well, where youth workers are based.
So quite a diverse range.
Q230 Bill Esterson: Which will
survive, and what will be cut as a result of the cuts? Harry
Fowler: I am between a rock and a hard place at the moment.
The current figure that is being talked about in Birmingham is
a cut to my services of £3 million, although I am assured—
Q231 Bill Esterson: Out of a total
of how much? Harry Fowler: £5.8 million.
So that will reduce it to £2.8 million. But I am being
told by senior cabinet members that that is youth services, and
not the youth service, and there is some debate going on in the
press at the moment.
Q232 Bill Esterson: So that is
over half your budget, if that figure is right? What is the overall
budget cut to Birmingham as a proportion?
Harry Fowler: I am not sure of
that figure, to be honest. In terms of the local authority set-up?
Bill Esterson: Yes.
Harry Fowler: I don't know, but
it is not that high—I think it is about 13, but I will need
to check that. There is some debate about that figure—I
am assured by senior cabinet members that it won't be that figure,
but at the same time in the budget plans that is the £3 million
identified. So I think there are alternative sources of funding
being looked at, maybe to bridge that gap and look at a period
of time over which that reduction can be better managed.
Q233 Bill Esterson: So uncertainty,
but at the moment somewhere over half?
Harry Fowler: Yes. Certainly
over the next two to three years, yes.
Bill Esterson: Same sets of questions—who
wants to go next?
Chair: Who's feeling succinct?
David Wright: I'll attempt to
be. I represent an umbrella organisation of English heads of
young people's services. Therefore I can't specifically answer
the questions in your first part.
Bill Esterson: You might have a picture,
though, a pattern.
David Wright: We did a survey
before Christmas of heads of services, to try to understand the
current situation in relation to budget cuts this year—the
in-year savings that we needed to make to youth services—and
what the expectation was over time. Like all surveys—and
it was Christmas—it was partial, but we saw at least four
local authorities making savings of over £500,000, and nearly
61% making a significant budget reduction of over £100,000,
which means an average cut this year of 14%. That translates
into about 10% of the work force being lost this year.
The difficulty is that people's expectations
are that they will now have to begin a process of looking forward
in the next two to three years at what savings they might be expected
to make. Nearly two thirds of them are expecting savings of at
least over £500,000, an equivalent of about 28% cuts in the
budget. That is extreme, because we are seeing some services
that by that stage will have made over and above the level of
savings that Harry has described in Birmingham. Some services
are looking at 70% to 80% cuts in their budget as well.
So there is a significant change in the landscape,
and we are at a crossroads. We might see a series of things that
we're looking for in youth work, in an environment where some
elements of delivering that service effectively may no longer
be present in some local authority areas. That will vary very
much from area to area.
Q234 Chair: When you said cuts
to some services may be 70% or 80%, I don't know whether you meant
some local authorities—
Bill Esterson: Certainly, that's what
my local authority has been doing.
David Wright: Some local authorities
are at the point of cutting not only their grant aid to their
direct delivery of youth services, but their grants to the voluntary
sector. So the picture is tremendously mixed. It raises a challenge,
and there's a redundant discussion about how services are delivered.
At this point we need to ensure that services for young people
are secured and maintained as part of the local authority offer,
or the local area offer for young people, to support them.
Q235 Bill Esterson: Would you
support a move to a per capita spending formula for 13 to 19-year-olds,
similar to what goes on in schools? Is that the way to protect
this? Otherwise it appears to be an easy target for cuts.
David Wright: I think you've got
to provide, within the local authority setting, an opportunity
or context that enables people to take account of the value of
services. A per capita setting is one issue, as is ring-fencing
that funding—though I know that that is difficult at this
stage. Another issue is ensuring that you also have an entitlement
for young people's well-being in a local area that allows people
to say, "This is what you should secure"—not how
you deliver it because that is something you would go on to elsewhere.
What you look for now is whether you have something that every
young person within that local authority area should expect as
part of their growing up and successful transition to adulthood.
Coupled with per capita funding, that would be a way forward.
Q236 Bill Esterson: You were getting
support for that comment from the previous panel sitting behind
you. Perhaps we can move on to Garath and Brendan and the range
of questions about current provision and the impact of the cuts?
Garath Symonds: I think heads
of service are responsible for different things in different local
authorities. I am responsible for the commissioning of 16 to 19
education, a small strategic commissioning function, which used
to be the Learning and Skills Council, youth justice, youth services
and Connexions. The service came together in 2009 and our budget
was around £18.5 million. In the next financial year it went
down by £0.5 million at the beginning of the year, then when
the new Government came in there were about £8 billion of
cuts across the country. That impacted directly on my service
to the tune of about £2.1 million—£1.6 million
was on Connexions directly, and the rest was split between youth
services and youth justice. We are going to make a further £1.8
million of savings in this current year, bringing us down to a
budget of around £14 million by 1 April 2012.
We are going through a big process of change
and transformation, and in my view, we will not be reducing services,
outputs, or the hours of youth work that are delivered on the
ground. In many cases, we will be delivering more youth work,
and hopefully better outcomes.
Q237 Bill Esterson: How are you
able to deliver more with £4 million less?
Garath Symonds: By doing some
quite unique partnerships with the voluntary sector. We have 32
youth centres, and we are not closing any of them.
Chair: I am sorry to cut you off, Garath,
but that is the next subject when we move on.
Brendan O'Keefe: On the basis
of what's been said, I'm going to visit Surrey very soon. [Laughter.]
My service covers a range of young people's services—Connexions,
youth services, teenage pregnancy programmes, health programmes,
youth sports, arts, drama—lots of different things. Our
services are at the age range of 10 to 24, and our core is 13
to 19. We attract around 40% of our local youth population to
our services in one way or another during the course of a year.
The budget is currently around £6.9 million.
We are taking a hit for next year, almost all from a reduction
in Government grants—or what were formerly Government grants—of
round about £700,000, or 13.5% of our operating budget. The
council itself is not making significant reductions in youth services
for 2011-12. Our services are valued by the council, but I don't
anticipate their being able to sustain that position throughout
the budget deficit programme, hence our ambition to do something
radically different with our youth services, which you may want
to go on to later.
Q238 Bill Esterson: Have you had
any indication of what the likely final reductions will be?
Brendan O'Keefe: By 2015?
Bill Esterson: Yes.
Brendan O'Keefe: No, but I can
probably work it out fairly carefully myself. Just taking the
28% reduction in local authority spending as a benchmark, that
would result in a very, very significant reduction in our ability
to run youth services. Because most of our services are discretionary,
I anticipate that it will be higher, but there is not yet a council
position on that; it is purely my estimate.
Q239 Bill Esterson: So you think
that because a lot of it is discretionary it would be higher than
the council average?
Brendan O'Keefe: That's what I
anticipate.
Q240 Neil Carmichael: To all of
you: have the Government given any indication of how many independent
providers they would expect to see in this sector? Additionally,
what do you think independent providers will bring to improve
provision? Brendan, do you want to kick off?
Brendan O'Keefe: Do you mean the
voluntary and community sector, the private sector and so on?
Q241 Neil Carmichael: Yes. Basically,
what will the landscape look like in terms of commissioning from
independent providers?
Brendan O'Keefe: From the perspective
of Kensington and Chelsea, and actually the three boroughs of
west London, which, as you are probably aware, are developing
the sharing of services and commissioning processes, the direction
of travel is for the councils to become predominantly commissioning
councils. The landscape will look very different from the current
one. There will be a lot less delivery by councils themselves,
and much more in terms of commissioning from the voluntary and
community sector and the private sector.
Q242 Neil Carmichael: What improvements
do you expect to see in terms of delivery and provision?
Brendan O'Keefe: For our own service,
we are planning to become part of that sector. We are planning
to opt out of the local authority in order to run our own business,
contracted back with the local authority at less cost. The improvement
for us is that we will be able to attract funding from a variety
of different sources, which we currently cannot access. The social
finance landscape is beginning to open up. The Cabinet Office
has recently issued a paper on this, and if I can ask the Committee
to make one recommendation to the Government, it is to make good
on the potential in that paper for the social finance field to
be opened up to organisations to access funds from various different
sources. That will change the landscape completely.
Neil Carmichael: Garath?
Garath Symonds: I don't think
Brendan needs to come to Surrey, because it sounds as though he
is doing some similar things. I do not anticipate any improvements
from moving to a commissioned or outsourced model, because I do
not believe that the voluntary sector provides good services and
the statutory sector provides bad services. I think there are
other benefits to moving to a more commissioned or outsourced
model that we can explore, but the key issue with quality and
improvement is around the quality management system and the performance
management system that we have in place. If it is a good system,
that will work regardless of the provider. As Howard was saying,
it is not about the actual provider but the management system
that surrounds it.
Q243 Neil Carmichael: Can you
give us a hint of those other benefits that you would like to
explore?
Garath Symonds: I think the voluntary
sector can do things at less cost. I was talking earlier about
how the amount that we are spending on management is going to
be massively reduced, because the voluntary sector can manage
services at less cost. It can attract funding from outside, and
it can attract community assets in a way that we cannot. It can
leave a community capital in a way that we cannot, because it
is more local, more embedded and part of the community. Those
benefits are the ones that we are trying to capitalise on.
David Wright: In answer to your
question, the indication is that the Government want to see a
greater diversification of the sector, which is the ambition.
I would agree with the two colleagues so far that there is a need
to move to increased commissioning in terms of that. I would put
two caveats in place, however.
First, at the moment, as well as the large reductions
in money for the local authority sector for youth work providers,
the voluntary and community sector is almost being hit equally
hard if not harder from the process, because it is seeing cuts
not only in the funding that it receives from central Government
and other grant areas, but in the money that it receives from
local authorities. It is being hit by a double whammy at the same
time as the opportunities are there for it to be able to open
up and to compete. Its size is often both its advantage and its
disadvantage. We want to see a thriving local community sector
that responds to reflect the needs and engagement of the local
community. That is the first warning.
Secondly, and this is where commissioning needs
to be looked at slightly in a new way, it requires that level
playing field across the piece. That level playing field is both
in terms of access for the voluntary and community sector and
in terms of standards and outcomes. If we can move towards that
position, that would then give us that optimum choice of what
the best outcomes for young people are. You would then start to
look at the models that might deliver that, and you would not
be prescribed by one sector over the other.
Q244 Neil Carmichael: Who is going
to be responsible for making that level playing field?
David Wright: That should be in
the emerging and changing role of the local authority, I would
suggest. That is the role of the local authority, which is best
placed to provide the local, strategic leadership to support and
pull together partners across the piece, and to find the best
outcomes for its citizens.
Q245 Neil Carmichael: Harry, have
you anything to add?
Harry Fowler: A particular issue
in Birmingham is the scale—the size of the city and the
range of the voluntary sector—and there not being a single
voice we can talk to in the voluntary sector. We have started
a range of summits, one of which is next week, to begin to engage
the sector. As I said, we are going down the line of developing
local, smaller voluntary organisations and enabling them to take
on their local youth project.
To dispel perhaps not a myth but the misunderstanding
sometimes, the partnership between statutory and voluntary youth
services is already extremely close. It is very hard to draw a
line between some of them. We have statutory youth workers based
in voluntary organisations—secondments and so on—and
it is about building on those existing partnerships.
The line of travel in Birmingham for commissioning
will be that commissioning will be around targeted and vulnerable
young people. Alternative ways of securing services will be explored
for the more universal. Then the issue is how to tie those universal
youth services into the more targeted provision aimed at vulnerable
young people.
Q246 Neil Carmichael: David, may
we talk about mutualisation, which is something you are pursuing
as an organisation? Could you capture, for the benefit of everyone
listening, what you mean by that? How do you think it will both
save money and improve outcomes?
David Wright: Last summer, we
embarked on a process of looking at how to make sense of the changing
landscape. We ran something called Living with Less, on how youth
services might start to address the changing landscape. One of
the emerging issues was, clearly, a sense that there was a need
to focus on what local authorities are actually looking at in
terms of core provision, which is the relationship with targeted
services, supporting and preventing young people from becoming
vulnerable, but also a range of other services.
One concern was a break-up or fragmentation
of the local authority structure and, alongside that, the loss
of issues about progression, training, qualifications and standards.
One of the models that started to emerge was a recognition that
perhaps a way forward for youth services in 2011 was to follow
some of the paths of other local authority services in the '90s
and early years—needing to be in a different place, or to
be externalised, and to be in a position to offer that critical
mass. One thing key to that has been the opportunity that mutualisation
offers.
Brendan can talk about some of the specifics
of his current experience, but the benefits that we have seen
is that it affords that critical mass and buy-in—it almost
happens that services feel they are engaged in the delivery and
change of the process. Most important, in the model we have been
working with, with our colleagues in FPM, is the opportunity of
engaging young people in the management, direction and membership
of that service, which is an extension of young people's involvement
as young citizens in the delivery of service.
The dilemma we faced is that, in the current
climate, people have been salami slicing and trying to balance
the books. The opportunity now affords itself, over the next two
years, as we start to look at service redesign, for us to see
a number of those local authorities starting to go down the mutualisation
route. They are exploring that. Because of confidentiality, I
cannot say which local authorities they are, but we are looking
at around 17 that are interested or taking some steps further
down the line. What we will see, I think, is a lot of development
and then, at some point, the first, followed by quite a few more,
actually to pursue that route. The benefit of mutualisation is
the sense of involvement, in terms of the community, staff and
young people, primarily for delivery.
Q247 Neil Carmichael: Brendan,
David suggested that I ask you how you are getting on with your
project and mutualisation. Have you any comments you would like
to make to us? Also, have you been finding any benefits or do
you expect any?
Brendan O'Keefe: Yes, certainly.
We are part of the Cabinet Office pathfinder project. For some
time now we have been looking at different ways of delivering
our services, as what was coming down the track did not look good.
We have to look at different ways of organising ourselves and
attract additional income. We had some thoughts of developing
ourselves into a trust or trading company. We can and will do
that but it is not going to do the trick—it will not bring
in sufficient income for us to be able to deliver these services
at the current level of attainment. So we have decided to do something
more radical which is to develop ourselves into a social enterprise,
which is opted out of the council, then contract back with the
council at less cost and deliver youth services under a contracted
basis. The benefits will be that we can bring in funds from other
sources that are not currently available to us.
Chair: Such as? Where will you get this
extra?
Brendan O'Keefe: Social impact
bonds, the emerging social enterprise, social finance field, the
Big Society bank, trusts and charities. All of these are not currently
available to local authorities, or local authorities will not
be able to pitch for them. So we will be in a place to take advantage
of this emerging field.
Q248 Neil Carmichael: So
you will be more flexible and more manoeuvrable in the market?
Brendan O'Keefe: Absolutely.
I have to be able with my staff to design services that people
will pay for. Regarding this issue that the Committee keeps returning
to around being able to prove worth, if I cannot prove the worth
people will not pay for it. So it is a very important element
of our development. We are redesigning the service to show much
more the worth of what we do and evidence of that because that
is part of our business case. "Trust me, I'm a youth worker"
is not a business case; you have got to be able to show that what
you do adds value and creates value for the young people, particularly
the people who are paying for it.
Q249 Neil Carmichael: How would
payment by results fit in?
Brendan O'Keefe: I see that
as part of the scenario. It could not be the only one as it is
too big a business risk. I am sorry to go into the commercial
terms already but that is the way I am thinking right now. For
any organisation to be simply about payment by results, you are
taking an enormous risk with your set up but it has to be part
of the scenario.
Q250 Damian Hinds: I don't want
to ask too many open-ended questions as I am conscious that this
is a massive field but it always strikes me that the text-book
example of social impact bonds is prisoners. It is a fantastic
example which is very clean—a confined group of people,
limited number, easy circumstance to describe and, if you can
measure in two years' time three offending rates less than that,
then you have done it. But beyond prisoners and into youth work,
and indeed you might say more broadly as well, I would love it
if it were possible to make that principle work across a whole
range of things but is it really possible and how big is the potential?
Brendan O'Keefe: It's enormous
and one of the things we are doing as part of our service re-design
is to have a pilot project around a term you may be familiar with—social
return on investment. This is a systematic way in which you can
define the outcomes you want to achieve in terms that reflect
economic and social value. You can turn that into a business case
for funding and we can see a range of our services that we currently
offer, including services—
Q251 Damian Hinds: If I have understood
this correctly and I am not saying I have, because it is a complex
field, that sounds like payment by results. As I understood it,
with social impact bonds there is a saving to society and to the
Exchequer if that person does not go back to prison. That is what
funds the up-front bit, whereas with youth work in general the
average horizon you are talking about before you see a saving
is multiple times that. It is a less easy to define population
as people come in and out of it and you cannot necessarily say
that what you did was what made it that sort of sum.
Brendan O'Keefe: That is true.
Damian Hinds: I am being very open and
the Chair is going to slap me down.
Chair: It is always fascinating.
David Wright: It is the difference
between the targets and the open access. You can start to identify
some specific activities that you want to be able to achieve with
particular groups of young people. We have had the experience
of that. The teenage pregnancy work has been an example of that.
We know that by reducing teenage conceptions or later pregnancy
we can see in the levels of investment that there are savings
for the state as a consequence. In those areas you can clearly
see that.
The other issue is that the more general and
the more open-access it is, the less clear it becomes because
of all the things you have already heard this morning. So it depends
on how you pick and choose and I think that is how you construct
your local model to enable that and respond to that.
Garath Symonds: As for savings
that are accrued elsewhere in the system, a police inspector wrote
to me yesterday saying that she was concerned about the cuts she
had read about in the paper. She said that they had done a great
job with the youth service in reducing antisocial behaviour in
Tandridge, the district that she comes from. I know that there
are no antisocial behaviour orders in Tandridge and that antisocial
behaviour has reduced in that area. She asked me to make commitments
to keep the level of funding.
I could say to her, "If I have reduced
antisocial behaviour, I have saved you money. There is a saving
that we could both share." I am not sure that the system
is sophisticated enough at local level to say, "I accrued
a saving for you, and I want some of your saving." That
is a total playful community-based budget-type scenario.
Q252 Damian Hinds: Many people
would claim credit for that saving, not just you, such as "The
school has also done a fantastic job. The estate has been very
well run", and all that blah, blah, blah.
Garath Symonds: Absolutely. The
original example that you gave of crime is good, because the cost
of crime is quite easy to calculate. The London School of Economics
recently did some work saying that the whole lifetime cost of
a NEET young person to society—UK plc, if you like—in
loss of taxes and benefit payment is about £97,000. As our
big strategy is about increasing participation in education, training
and employment and if a social financier wanted to invest in a
social impact bond, we could reduce NEETs and say that every unit
is worth 97k to the Government.
Q253 Damian Hinds: In theory,
you could. If that £97,000 turns up tangibly on some profit
and loss account—
Garath Symonds: That's why it
is so difficult.
Chair: We will have to move on, fascinating
though it is.
Q254 Craig Whittaker: Harry, Birmingham
was named and shamed. In fact, I will name and shame the person.
It was Jason Stacey from the YMCA. He said, "I have to
name and shame Birmingham, which seems to be cancelling contracts
as it sees fit, already closing departments and taking advantage
of the un-ring-fencing of the specific grants to divert money
away." Is that a fair assessment?
Harry Fowler: I'm on thin ice
if I am talking about the whole relationship between the city
council and the voluntary sector. If I can talk about my director
and the youth service relations with the voluntary sector, there
is an element of truth in that. We supported 48 voluntary sector
youth organisations up to the end of this financial year. We
have had to withdraw that funding. They range from large organisations
to small scout groups, and we have had to save nearly £700,000
as a result of that. I think that the voluntary sector has had
a hit from that, for sure, yes. That is as far as I want to go
in talking about the overall council picture.
Q255 Craig Whittaker: Okay. Let
me ask you a question and then open it up to the rest of the panel.
In the previous session, Dr Howard Williamson talked about youth
services that we should not be doing and the duplication of services.
How much of what Birmingham has done is because of that or is
it just a knee-jerk reaction to the cuts?
Harry Fowler: Most of the wheedling
out of poor practice has gone on over the last five or 10 years.
In answer to the Chair's first question this morning, "Have
things improved or not?", yes, they have, in statutory youth
services generally. We are far more sophisticated in terms of
management information systems. We have measured according to
credited outcomes. We are much clearer now about saying what
our role is, and how we contribute. That process has wheedled
out a lot of bad practice over the years. We are a much leaner,
more efficient service now than we were even five years. I do
not think that a great deal of poor practice goes on in the local
authority youth service now. It is back to that notion of it
being a fairly easy-to-pick service to find cuts because of its
non-statutory base.
Q256 Craig Whittaker: So it is
a knee-jerk reaction?
Harry Fowler: Those are your words,
not mine, but a political decision is being made to value that
service less than other services.
Q257 Craig Whittaker: What about
the other councils? How much have you done around trying to get
rid of duplication of services and services that do not deliver
outcomes, particularly around youth?
Garath Symonds: There's poor practice
and poor performance in every part of the public sector. It's
a constant thing. We are trying to have a single strategy so
that our services are going towards one outcome, which is around
a participation in education agenda. The commissioning model
allows us to decommission and recommission on the basis of young
people's needs and of the performance of our providers. Where
we say that our providers are performing poorly, we can decommission
them and recommission another service, and manage quality in that
way. That was tested out when we cut the Connexions service by
£1.6 million last summer, when we established a decommissioning
policy. [Interruption.]
Chair: For Hansard's sake we shall
wait until the bell stops.
Garath Symonds: Just to finish
what I was saying, the commissioning model allows you to decommission
and recommission based on performance and quality in a way that
allows you to improve quality over time.
Q258 Craig Whittaker: In your specific
case, the Committee has heard evidence that you are at the other
end of the scale. We have heard evidence that you don't salami
slice and that you are doing fairly well in that regard. Why are
you doing it so differently from other authorities? Why do you
seem to be achieving far greater results with far less?
Garath Symonds: We're not there
yet. What I am trying to talk about are projections from 2012
onwards. The services that we have are ones that we have had for
20 years, and I think I am in very much the same place as Brendan
and Harry where we are redesigning or—in the terminology
that I would use—recommissioning. What we are saying is
that from 1 April 2012, I will be able to buy more hours of youth
work than I can now with a smaller budget.
Brendan O'Keefe: Similar to Garath,
we have quality and performance indicators by which we assess
the success or otherwise of our commissioning processes. Internally
within the local authority, we have line management processes
that do a similar sort of thing.
We are protecting the voluntary sector budget
for next year, 2011-12. That doesn't mean we will commission the
same services, but we will protect the amount and ensure that
the voluntary sector is still supported. There is a very strong
partnership between the voluntary sector and the local authority.
One of my colleagues has said that it is hard to delineate the
two. One of the risks of a rigid form of commissioning-only authority
is you lose that dynamic, where the local authority can strongly
support, enable and empower the voluntary sector. Any commissioning
process needs to be able to take that into account, and that dynamic
should not disappear.
Q259 Bill Esterson: Garath was
talking about trying to square the circle with less money and
to improve services. Concerns have been raised in Surrey about
the lack of adequate risk assessment involving front-line staff,
and a lack of consultation with those staff and service users.
Real concerns were raised by the previous panel about experienced
professionals being involved in the reconfigured services. I know
that it is difficult to answer that quickly, but they are real
concerns that have been raised with me.
Garath Symonds: In the past 12
months, we have consulted 8,000 young people. In the five years
previous to that, we had consulted only 1,000. Consultation is
an ongoing process, and I go out to meet young people myself and
consult very directly. We have done a significant amount of activity
around consultation and working with staff. The youth service
specifically, where many of these concerns are probably coming
from, put a proposal to me and to management, listing 12 substantive
points that say, "This is how we want the model to look in
the future", and I have accepted 10 of them; this was only
last week. So there is consultation going on, and I am listening
to a range of stakeholders—young people, elected members,
staff, the voluntary sector and other partners. We are going through
a period of change and quite radical transformation. We've got
political backing; the leadership of our politicians is with us.
You need that very much to make change happen. But change is a
difficult thing for people to go through, and people will raise
concerns. What I am saying is that I am listening to them, and
last week was an example of where we not only listened, but accepted
a range of points that came from the staff.
Q260 Ian Mearns: In terms of identifying
the specific needs of young people, have you done any significant
mapping exercises to identify, quantify and prioritise the needs
of young people in the areas that you come from? Have you done
any mapping exercises in terms of the services that are out there,
and how they could be better integrated to meet the needs that
you've identified?
Brendan O'Keefe: We do that as
a matter of course as part of our commissioning process. We do
an annual needs assessment—we're doing one right now, in
fact, to support our commissioning process for next year. And
yes, mapping is part and parcel of what we do. What we don't do
enough of is mapping what goes on next door and slightly beyond;
that's something we need to do more of. As our tri-borough mentality
starts to develop in west London, we're thinking more about joint
commissioning across local authorities as a way of producing better
services that cost less and are more efficient in the way that
they're run.
David Wright: I would add that
more local authorities are doing mapping. It's one of the key
things that they do in terms of service planning, and is part
of that broader contribution overall. It is not just about how
you then use that for commissioning; it's about ensuring the removal
of duplication and about the contribution to the overall delivery
of services in the locality.
Q261 Ian Mearns: Isn't there a
dilemma for service leaders, in that there are improvements to
be made in terms of what constitutes need, what sort of need there
is and what the effect of measures to meet those needs should
be?
Garath Symonds: We did an assessment,
which we completed last year, called "One in ten." One
in 10 of our 1 million population are aged 13 to 19—teenagers.
The assessment looked at a range of needs of young people across
the county, by borough and district—you might know that
we are a two-tier authority.
Along with that needs assessment, we looked
at what services are out there for young people, and we worked
out that there are about 1,000 youth organisations across the
county—about 100 per borough and district—and that
there are more things to do and more places to go for young people
in the county than the average young person would have the free
time for. Part of our commissioning strategy is to market those
activities that we don't deliver but are delivered elsewhere.
That is a key thing about need and local need. A big part of our
strategy is to ensure that resources are made available locally,
so that local people can assign resource to need at a local level.
We are now looking at presenting a localised picture of need for
our local committees to make decisions about commissioning NEET
services for young people.
Q262 Ian Mearns:
Do you involve young people in the commissioning process? With
the route that you've identified and are going down, isn't there
a danger that a greater range of services will be available to
the articulate, who can access them and are socially mobile, than
to people who particularly need specific inputs in order to become
re-engaged in civil society?
David Wright: One of the real
benefits, looking back a little, of things such as the youth opportunity
fund, the youth capital fund experiences and some of the processes
that operated before was that you saw a tremendous range of young
people engaged in decision making. About 900,000 people were engaged
in that process, in terms of decision making. If you add in the
local mayors and the local cabinets and so forth, you see a range
of young people engaging more than ever in that contribution,
in terms of civil society, which is a really positive thing that
we need to recognise.
One of the dilemmas is that it is often asked,
"When are you reaching the hardest to reach?" I think
that everyone around here would give you anecdotal evidence and
examples of where you're seeing disadvantaged young people, from
looked-after children committees or boards through to young offenders,
being engaged in those processes, and a fundamental part of that
has been the role that the youth worker plays in securing those
young people and supporting them to be able to make their own
judgments—not those of the youth worker, or the adult.
Harry Fowler: There is an added
issue. Our experience is that it has not been that difficult to
engage those young people in all sorts of parliaments and forums
and so on, but the tension arises when what they perceive to be
a need differs very greatly from what the commissioning body perceives
as such. Young people tell us repeatedly that they want more activities—places
to go and things to do. They want health projects, help with education,
and things to combat violence. They want to feel safe on buses.
Interestingly, they want improved parks—they like the parks.
There are all sorts of things that young people tell us, and the
challenge is for adult institutions to trust that judgment and
invest in it.
Q263 Pat Glass:
We've heard from Harry that in Birmingham you are looking at summits
and the range of voluntary and private sectors. Garath and Brendan,
can you tell us how you are involving the voluntary and private
sectors in your commissioning decisions?
Brendan O'Keefe: We have
a strong relationship with our voluntary sectors, which is based
around treating them as partners, rather than simply as contractors.
We involve them in helping to set priorities and the sorts of
outcomes that we want to see—for the whole community, not
just from the local authority's perspective. We do not involve
our voluntary sector partners directly in the commissioning decisions
because there would be a clear conflict of interest. There has
to be a separation of those functions. Our voluntary sector partners
are very much part of the whole commissioning panoply, but they
are not part of the actual decision making.
Garath Symonds: We have an organisation
called Surrey Youth Focus, which represents 80 voluntary sector
organisations in the county. We also have Surrey Youth Consortium,
which is a group of about 10 or 12 voluntary sector organisations
that are not-for-profit companies, rather than the voluntary branch
sector, which is based on volunteering. I work closely with them.
As Brendan has said, it is about strategic partnership, and those
organisations are not involved in commissioning decisions, which
are based on need and priority, rather than what the voluntary
sector thinks. We talk to those organisations, but they are not
involved in the decision making.
Q264 Pat Glass:
Brendan, in your submission, you told us that your model with
the voluntary sector "has proved highly successful."
What is your evidence for that?
Brendan O'Keefe: We have a set
of outcomes to achieve on behalf of the council, and we involve
the whole voluntary sector in helping us to do that. The commissioning
process is based on everybody reducing duplication and inefficiencies,
and pulling together in the same direction to achieve those outcomes.
We have regular, monthly meetings with our voluntary
sector organisations—I am going to one this afternoon—to
engage them in the process and to ensure that they feel valued
and informed about what the council is doing and its direction
of travel. We second staff to the voluntary sector to help them
with quality issues. We provide advice and guidance to them that
often makes the difference between their folding and remaining
alive, so it can get down to that sort of level. The key for us
is to treat our voluntary sector organisations as partners in
a process, rather than simply having a commissioning and contracting
relationship.
Q265 Chair: Will you write to
us, Brendan, with the outcomes?
Brendan O'Keefe: Yes.
Q266 Pat Glass: The Committee
has heard evidence that voluntary sector organisations feel they
are being unfairly targeted in the cuts. How are you going to
prevent that feeling of unfairness if you do not involve them,
at least through representations, in your commissioning decisions?
Brendan O'Keefe: They are certainly
involved in representations. To repeat something that I said a
moment ago, next year we are ring-fencing our voluntary sector
budget, so the same sum will be included. We won't necessarily
commission the same organisations, but the sum of money will be
the same. One of the things that we are doing in our pathfinder
mutuals projects is involving our voluntary sector organisations
in the planning process because, not unnaturally, they are a little
concerned about this, as we are moving on to their turf. They
see us as a very big threat in future. We are talking to them
about how we develop collaborative ways of working and jointly
bidding for funds. In fact, we are already doing that. Two current
examples are funds from the PCT and from the neighbouring local
authority that we are bidding for in collaboration with the voluntary
sector. I think that will help to reassure the voluntary sector
that in future it will continue to be part of the local authority's
drive to help young people.
Q267 Pat Glass: Finally, what
are you doing to encourage the smaller providers to come together
in consortiums to bid for contracts?
Harry Fowler: As I said, we are
holding the second of a number of summits next week to try to
gather together as many voluntary sector colleagues as we can.
I echo Brendan's point. We have estimated that there are somewhere
in the region of 1,000 voluntary organisations in Birmingham,
but it is difficult to count them. We would welcome consortiums.
The problem at the moment is a capacity issue, in terms of
doing a lot of work with those voluntary organisations to assess
their capacity—what ability have they got to take on some
of these responsibilities, and how do we withdraw while supporting
them in picking up?
Q268 Pat Glass: Are you giving
them encouragement? I'm particularly thinking about the smaller
ones. What are you doing to ensure that those smaller organisations
can have that capacity?
Harry Fowler: It is a new road
for us at the moment. Other than the support that has already
been described, we have local youth officers and workers who work
with voluntary organisations. The ground has shifted. We are no
longer funding those organisations. We are working in a different
way, and we will be asking them to develop capacity. Our officers
and workers will work alongside them to do that. But we are really
at the start of that road. At the moment, we are beginning.
Chair: Thank you, Harry. One last question
from Nic.
Q269 Nic Dakin: In his study on
inequalities, Professor Marmot talked about actions needing to
be universal, but of a scale and intensity proportionate to the
level of disadvantage. On this idea of proportional universalisation,
how do you manage the relationship between universal and targeted
provision?
Brendan O'Keefe: I think I'll
write that down. One of the things that we have been able to do
through the provision of universal services is ensure that young
people whom you might call targeted—let's use that shorthand—do
attend, and they do. It gives us an opportunity to then work with
those young people in a very structured way. I can give you an
example. We've had an issue with gang problems in Chelsea and
North Kensington recently, which has spilled over into Westminster.
A bit of a turf war is developing. The majority of the young people
involved are attending our services, which gives us an opportunity
to work with them very intensively around this issue. I guess
that may be a demonstration of the professor's theory. Could you
give me that again?
Nic Dakin: Proportional universalisation.
Brendan O'Keefe: I shall say that
at the next scrutiny meeting and see if anybody understands what
I'm talking about.
Chair: It should really be said with
an American accent. Garath?
Garath Symonds: I'm not sure we
can afford to provide a universal service. If there are hundreds
of thousands of teenagers in Surrey, and I've got £14 million,
I can't deliver a truly universal service. Our youth centres and
youth clubs will be universal in that they won't turn young people
away. In fact, they will try to attract them, whether they are
vulnerable or not. The universal offer that we are going to make
is around information, and we are going to provide information
on a range of things—services, things to do, places to go,
education, training and employment, and health services and so
on. Our universal offer will be a digital one in the future.
David Wright: I would just add
that that no one should pretend that youth services are a universal
service in that sense. Young people choose to get themselves involved
in this process, or choose not to. They may choose to go down
a variety of different routes. There are those young people who
benefit from a youth-work intervention, want that youth-work intervention,
and choose it in their own way. It is supporting that variety
of opportunity at a local level, and making sure that once you've
got that universal youth work offer, it is identified, focused
and targeted on the areas of most need. That's where you bring
that back into the needs assessment of a local community, and
how you focus those energies. That's always been the case, and
that is how it will inform the future as well.
Chair: Excellent. Sorry, Harry, I'm going
to have to cut you off. Thank you very much. It has been a very
useful morning all round, and your contributions have been valued.
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