Agenda item

S Baker introduced Claire Lynch, who is the Community Partnership Team Lead and is heavily involved in the project and the author of the report.

Later this month, Cabinet will be receiving a report seeking their approval to replace the current core funding arrangements. The new processes are what we call outcome based commissioning. We currently have 10 locally based Strategic Partners these are listed in the report and receive annual grant funding to deliver a range of services for Dacorum residents.

The agreements don’t focus on what the outcomes or benefits are for the residents of Dacorum or the Council and the agreements themselves are not contracts and therefore are not enforceable.

This Council has agreed that the grant funding for the Strategic Partners would cease after this financial year and from 1^st April 2016 it will be replaced by an outcome based commissioning model.

Members should note that the advantage of the commissioning approach is that the actual needs of Dacorum residents are assessed using the best available evidence. The Finance and Resources Overview and Scrutiny received a similar report to this last week and their comments have been incorporated in the Cabinet report. Clearly it’s too late for your comments to be incorporated in the Cabinet report so we will record any comments made and verbally relay them to the Cabinet Meeting so Cabinet can take into account your views when they make their decision.

Cllr Hearn asked if this had been discussed with the voluntary sector and what was their feedback?

S Baker said yes there has been two rounds of consultations with the Strategic Partners Claire has been to the consultation meetings and she will brief you on it.

C Lynch presented the report explaining they are moving to an outcome based commissioning model. This is in line with Cabinet office good practice. It is a four stage process, analyse, plan, do and review, and at the minute they have gone through the analyse stage. There have been two stages of consultation; the first stage was a survey that went out to users and face to face meetings with Strategic Partners, a survey and conversations with internal staff was also carried out. Once they had a better understanding they then moved onto stage two consultation where they started to develop some of the outcomes that they wanted to see for each service.

There have been  two CMT and Cabinet Member joint workshops to set the direction, group the services into contracts and shape outcomes.

What we are proposing is that the funding from the existing ten organisations that are funded through the Strategic Partner Programme is used to fund seven services that are based on evidence.

We are now in stage two consultations until 6^th November and we have had requests from two services to have an additional stage three consultation (Living Stable Live – previously the Druglink and DENS grant funding/ Preventing Relationship Breakdown – previously Mediation Hertfordshire and Relate Dacorum, Watford and Three Rivers grant funding)

The outcomes for each of the services can be viewed in the appendix from 3A-3E and the report outlines  the phased approach.

The first tender we are proposing will be the released at the start of November and that will be the Information Advice and Advocacy Service.  That  is the service which is currently delivered by the Citizens Advice Bureau. There will be a staggered approach thereafter which will be the voluntary sector support service which will be released in January. .

C Lynch highlighted that some of the acronyms were missing in the glossary. When the report  refers to CMT that is Corporate Management Team, CRI is Crime Reduction Initiative and CAADA  is Co-ordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse.

S Baker added that the meetings were done on a face to face individual basis to ensure quality consultation.

C Lynch was happy to take questions on the report

Cllr Harden arrived at 7.50pm

W Wyatt-Lowe said going back to the consultees, stage two. Staffs Residents and Councillors, when do you approach Councillors other than those in the room, with regards to Residents on the list? ClLR Wyatt-Lowe does have a slight concern that we assess people’s needs, irrespective of what people say we might want to consider their wants rather than their needs because quite often they don’t want what they need and he worries about presuming people’s needs without asking them. Should we be looking more at residents’ opinions earlier in the process?

 Cllr Wyatt-Lowe does also have a concern about using outcomes as sometimes you get tied down with in-flexible outcomes and we want flexible as we may find what matters this year might not matter next year, can we build in flexibility of outcomes when commissioning?

C Lynch said with the involvement of Councillors, the first stage consultation was sent out to all Councillors through the DBC mailing list, in the form of a survey.  There were also two joint workshops with Cabinet Members and CMT before the Overview and Scrutiny’s process.

We did carry out a survey for residents which was open to existing service users and residents and this was publicised on our website, Digest, Gazette article and  the team made sure that Strategic Partners ensured their service users had access to the consultation.

We are proposing that we move through a co- design process, they have asked that the Strategic Partners nominate service users that want to become part of the consultation/ co-design process and help shape the service.

In relation to the residents’ wants and needs they do agree that people say that what they want is different to the evidence of what people need. They have combined good practice after looking at areas like Camden to see how others are commission things and they have taken an approach to combine local information with national guidance. The majority of outcomes identified were quite broad and they are quite flexible with the provider. We will build flexibility into the contract, for example a clause to take into consideration changes in legislation which may affect demand.

Cllr Mahmood said there are so many core funded organisations and he noticed that when it comes to funding the biggest ones still get the biggest chunk. Is there a review of all of the services?

C Lynch said in terms of the financial values, Page 29 has a table which breaks down the financial values from before and after the review. There has been a redistribution of finances which takes into consideration other sources of funding in the area. Dacorum will be benefiting from just over £26k of money that the area has not seen in the past for Voluntary Sector Support. This has enabled a proposal for a larger reduction for that service and the savings have been redistributed to some of the services which Cllr Mahmood has referred to that support groups such as young people and victims of domestic violence.

Cllr Mahmood said that when they go out to tender we are only tendering for our funding. So are we saying that those organisations like Community Action for Dacorum can still function if they don’t get the tender? And when the tender process goes on, are you saying the Strategic Partners might not get the funding?

S Baker added to that saying other organisations might tender for these services. It may be that some strategic partners may not be successful, we can’t rule it out.

It may be the case that an organisation that loses out on the Council funding may still be in a position to operate depending on what other contracts it has with other authorities and other sources of funding; it may still be able to operate as a service but will not be able to operate these services under a contract and will not receive Council funding.

Cllr Mahmood asked how the funding process is fair for everyone, at the moment existing service providers benefit from subsidised rents, if a new organisation was to come in how would they benefit?. How would it be made equal?

S Baker said yes it’s a good question they do currently benefit from nominal rents and this will have to be taken into account as part of the evaluation process and adjustments will have to be made to create a level playing field.

Cllr Imarni refereed to page 7, Hertfordshire County Council commission for the countywide service. How does it work and how confident are you that they will be able to provide the best service to Dacorum residents if you were to take on a County Model?

C Lynch said the reference to HCC is a separate service that’s being commissioned by HCC. HCC did not have a standardised countywide approach in the past and are now moving to a county wide model. We will be benefitting from £26k more from HCC which means we can reduce the amount we put into the voluntary sector support, knowing that the gap will be bridged by the HCC fund. Existing CVS and Volunteer Centres from across the County are coming together to submit a tender for this service but as far we are aware there has been delay with the tender process due to the process of service providers trying to align themselves.

Cllr Imarni thanked C Lynch and said obviously there is a financial benefit but she’s concerned about the quality of service and how can this be maintained.

C Lynch said one of the benefits of moving to the outcome based model is that it focuses on our residents and the result of the service rather than the service itself.   The providers focus on how the community are benefitting it’s about community satisfaction, improvement in behaviours and changes within the community rather than looking at how many sessions and how many people for example. We are looking at how people and the community changes, there will be a lot of learning as this is the first time we are monitoring outcomes. The first 6 months to a year will be used to set a base line to be realistic for these service providers and target KPIs will be set thereafter.

Cllr Howard had a thought about how it would be cascaded to residents, because they have got used to the names of the current providers, how you will publicise it.

Cllr Harden reiterated that the names won’t be changing we are just defining what we want from the service.

Cllr Wyatt-Lowe said if someone else gets the job then wont this cause confusion? They will continue to use the one they know.

C Lynch said social value and added value will be embedded in the tender process, a good implementation plan and communication plan will need to be submitted and will be scored to make sure that the service will have the best chance of actually working. They will be doing their best to provide the best service for residents.

Cllr Harden added to that by saying the important part of this is partnership.  There was a scenario, effectively we were funding the strategic partners to help residents and now we are more clearly defining what it is we want them to provide.

Cllr Mahmood asked if there is succession planning in case one doesn’t win a bid.

Cllr Harden said these contracts will run for at least 3 years and there is nothing to say that the organisation that bids for it may not be the same organisation in a year or 3 years time.

Cllr Mahmood said how is the HRA funds being decided upon and how come it’s not being tightened?

A Vincent said there is a 10% reduction in the funding they provide.

Cllr Mahmood said it’s a very good report and very informative.