Agenda item

Councillor Harden, Portfolio Holder for Residents and Corporate Services reported that this was a review for Strategic Partners for a number of years designed to update Members on the role of converting Strategic Partners into Commissioning agents.

M Rawdon, Group Manager – People, summarised the report;

·         10 Strategic Partners at present – grant funded through the Strategic Partner programme. They have been receiving grant funding from Dacorum Borough Council to deliver services for us.

·         The Council agreed that they would stop the grant funding in 2016/17 financial year and that an outcome based commissioning model would be adopted.

·         The commissioning approach will assess the needs of the people of Dacorum through statistical analysis and consultation to develop service outcomes that link closely to what the Council’s vision and priorities.

C Lynch, Community Partnerships Team Leader summarised recent events;

·         The Council are using an outcome based commissioning model, which is in line with the Cabinet office good practice which goes through a process of analyse, plan, do and review process.

·         At present the team has looked at statistical evidence base and consulted with current service users and existing staff members that work front line and at a strategic level.

·         There have been CMT and Cabinet Member led workshops that look at shaping the outcomes for the new services.

·         In the past they have funded 10 organisations however we are proposing to change this to commission 7 services.

·         The proposal in place would hope to offer a 3 year contract with an option to extend pending the performance of the contract.

Questions

Councillor Taylor congratulated the officer on the report given to Members but highlighted that some of the figures did not add up on the “Value for money” section on page 25 of the report.

C Lynch confirmed that the overall figures do add up but that a sentence outlining that £60k of funding relating to the Housing and Revenue account had been left out of the paragraph in question, this had been identified during statutory comments for the Cabinet report and has since been amended. The figures have been checked and are correct.

Councillor Taylor made reference to the 10 Strategic Partners and mentioned that he was linked heavily to the Community Action Dacorum Group, and said that the funding represented a small 8% of their annual turnover. He outlined that CAD distribute funding to other organisations and asked the officer if the Council are looking at distributing income in future by one nominated party.

C Lynch replied that at present there is an agreement in place with 10 Strategic Partners. The funds are allocated to each Strategic Partner separately and they all go through a reporting process incorporating mid - term and end of year report.

Councillor Taylor made reference to the grouping of services and how this would work in practice. He asked the officer to confirm if this was still in the confidential stages.

C Lynch mentioned that a 10% reduction be implemented upon the steer from Cabinet and CMT. The Community Partnerships team were asked to go back and look at some of the evidence in terms of groupings for services. One of the proposals that came forward was having one service for Voluntary Sector support, this is a common approach across Hertfordshire and Nationally.  The details of how the groupings would work is essentially down to the charities but further advice and guidance will be provided from the Council . Meetings were held with each of the Strategic Partners over the last 2-3 weeks so all of the partners had a face to face meeting which identified the correct proposals for grouping for the phased approach and for distributing of finances.

The officer confirmed that they are in the consultation phase which will be open until the 6^th November where there will be an opportunity for all existing providers to feed more information back during that process.

Councillor Tindall said that he supported the move to the Commissioning regime. He referred to page 29 & 30 6.3 preventing relationship breakdown and commented that there was no mention of domestic abuse. He added that one of the possibilities would be to catch domestic abuse in its early stages and asked the officer if this could be included within the report.

R Tindall asked if the Dacorum Domestic Abuse Forum could continue to be supported.

Councillor Tindall also requested that the paragraph “we feel safe in our homes and community” on page 29, 6.6 be removed as it suggested that it referred to people who have responded to incidents of burglary or anti - social behaviour.

Councillor Harden agreed with Councillor Tindall’s statement regarding domestic violence and added that he is very passionate about victims of domestic violence. His main concern was if the Council were getting value for money for the £4000 they were allocated. He suggested that the £4000 and the additional £4000 should be given to the victims and supporting the victims.

Councillor Ashbourn referred to paragraph 6.6 on page 29. He said that he supported Councillor Tindall’s view in removing or modifying the statement “we feel safe in our homes and community”.

Councillor Ashbourn made reference to Druglink and their less than ideal reputation and wondered how the Council looks at the screening process for their service.

C Lynch added that Druglink had been funded by the Council for a number of years at approximately £63000. She mentioned that there had been some performance issues in the past however there are plans in place for improvement. Meetings have been set up on a quarterly basis to help monitor their performance which to date has shown improvement and are working very closely in partnership with the County providers CRI spectrum. They have also been aware the CQC accreditation for the Oxygen pathway, which is the rehabilitation unit previous named Nascent house which was closed in 2014. 

Councillor Ashbourn asked as part of the tender process if any other applicants were considered.

C Lynch mentioned that although Druglink and Dens were the previous recipients of the grant, what they are proposing is that those grants will be pooled together to fund the newly proposed service “Living Stable Lives”, anyone can tender for the new service that the Council will be going out to tender for.

M Rawdon explained that the reason behind the quarterly meetings with Druglink arose because there were some problems that came to their attention. They stopped the annual grant payment and now release it on a quarterly basis to safeguard the Council’s funds.

The Chair referred to page 28 item 3 and 4, the proposed finances and the proposed length of contracts. He asked if the officer could provide some clarification regarding these areas. The Chair asked if the contract length would be 10% for the 3 year period or if it would it be 10% for the first year and then look at the second and third year separately.

M Rawdon confirmed to Members that the 10% would be for the whole 3 years.

The Chair thanked the officers for their reports and the inclusion of the glossary of acronyms within the report.

Outcome:

Members provided feedback to the project team on the proposals. These will be included in the October Cabinet report.