The purpose of the Government's Supporting People programme is to provide a better quality of life for vulnerable people, enabling them to live more independently and maintain their tenancies. Local authorities deliver a programme of housing-related support and contract providers for the provision of Supporting People services.

For Supporting People to be successful, partnership working between agencies and organisations is vital. The London Borough of Lambeth recognises the critical role that the voluntary and community sector (VCS) plays in reaching the borough’s most vulnerable people. As a result, it now delivers almost all Supporting People services through contracts with VCS providers. It has developed a robust commissioning strategy that, supported by capacity building, defines this contractual relationship and makes it work.

The Supporting People five-year strategy was produced in 2005. It is part of a new approach to commissioning that has a strong focus on social inclusion. This new approach was partly prompted by the increasing complexity of service users’ needs, and partly by the need for a new administrative structure when Supporting People was introduced.

The three-year review involved the council, providers, service users and partners in assessing both met and unmet needs. This involved exploring what new things needed to be done, and how best to do them. For example, providers now have to identify in new tenders how they will link with local communities and with the council itself.

The commissioning strategy has resulted in a wider and more diverse range of providers being involved in the programme. These range from large registered social landlords (RSLs) and national charities through to small local community organisations.

One mandatory requirement for providers is to demonstrate outcomes that target those hard-to-reach groups in greatest need. All providers need to demonstrate quality standards and have the proven ability provide to deliver support to individuals to be accepted as part of the programme.

As part of the local strategic partnership (LSP), Lambeth Supporting People knows that it is far harder for the statutory agencies to achieve the level of access to the community that many voluntary organisations can. In recognition of this, and to lower the contracting barriers as much as possible, Lambeth Supporting People has developed a commissioning process that is accessible and short on bureaucracy. It has combined this with providing support for providers, many of which are small and local.

Lambeth is pro-actively encouraging the development of formal partnership arrangements and consortia. It ensures at an early stage that potential providers clearly understand:

• what the commissioning process entails
• what the tender requirements are
• for the providers which are successful, exactly what their contracts will demand of them

The Supporting People team also promotes and brokers a ‘buddying scheme’. Through this providers, especially the smaller ones, get together. This has proved very successful, especially in cases where they can learn from each other.

The Supporting People Commissioning Board wanted a strategy that was based on strategic relevance and was outcome focused. We now have a model that provides for the diverse needs of our different user groups, and is flexible enough to allow innovative approaches to meeting those needs.

The Supporting People commissioning strategy is now seen as the third sector commissioning benchmark for council services and also right across the LAA. It has come out of a process of moving from grant-based contracting to the commissioning of services. This is a challenging experience for those involved but at the same time a real learning curve to build on. For the Supporting People providers themselves, the accreditation they have to gain gives them the right to be included on Lambeth’s procurement database for all service opportunities across the borough. And because they know how the commissioning system as a whole works, it is a win-win situation.

Initial concerns about smaller providers not coping with a new and demanding system have proven largely unfounded, with some of the bigger providers experiencing major difficulties. This has been partly because of the 'super tanker effect' of major change, and partly because some of them are regionally based, and may be distanced from the users they service.

Jack Shieh, Director of the Vietnamese Mental Health Service (VHMS), said:
“Developing internal standards and policies was a real challenge – other providers were larger and had more resources to cope with the changes. We heard some other smaller organisations had been decommissioned for failing to meet certain standards, so we knew we had to tackle these obligations head on. We were given six months to do this. We needed help and Lambeth Supporting People team put us in touch with Thamesreach Bondway. With their help we took three to four months to develop policies and get them approved by the VMHS management committee.”

In addition, the Audit Commission’s Supporting People Inspection Report (January 2006) was very positive. A survey of the 72 service providers found that:

• 95 per cent of respondents were either satisfied, or very satisfied, with the provision of information about Supporting People for users and applicants
• 100 per cent were either satisfied, or very satisfied, with the arrangements for involving providers in the delivery and development of the programme
• 95 per cent were either satisfied, or very satisfied, with the advice and support available to providers from the council
• providers…working with more than one authority considered Lambeth to be more advanced in implementing the programme, and to have a more 'business-like' approach

As a cross-departmental team, Lambeth works well in partnership contexts. This is regarded as very important for bringing about quality and value for money. It is essential for working with other boroughs.
Having providers who work across authorities means it is vital for partnerships within and between boroughs to be well developed.

The experience of a Brixton pilot helps to exemplify this. Here, support from the VCS was focused particularly on young vulnerable people, single and with one or more children. Ann Skinner, Head of Supporting People, explains:
“The voluntary organisations involved were clearly the right agents to engage with the communities, identify individuals most in need, respond to them and directly deliver or broker help. It became clear that multiple disadvantages required a multi-agency approach – addressing depression, poverty, debt, homelessness, health problems and so on."

This focus on the whole person, rather than different symptoms being tackled by separate services, avoids duplication, confusion and the potential for misunderstanding in sensitive situations.

Developing and embedding a new, or additional approach to commissioning – a “commissioning strategy” – takes more time than you think. VCS providers must understand the way contracts are secured and managed and provide expertise, including:

• how 'commissions', 'grants' and 'tenders' are different
• how to approach each so as to secure their contracts
• what skills are needed and how to apply them

To make this easier, it is important to actively develop providers’ understanding and skills early on. Statutory sector partners must play a role in building capacity. At the same time, follow the rules of engagement because commissioning can alter the VCS and statutory sector relationship. This is due to the need to balance the distance required in contracting, with the closeness required of delivery partnerships

Getting a new approach to setting up or delivering a new service right first time would be unexpected and unusual. Lambeth has often used action research to pilot initiatives that look useful, evaluate them and make changes before including them for tender in the wider Supporting People programme.

We need to ensure the Supporting People commissioning model that is being used as a benchmark for the local area agreement (LAA) is successful. The head of Supporting People has been working closely with Communities and Local Government on a ground-breaking move to transform the Supporting People commissioning board into the Strategic Commissioning Board for the LAA. It has also spearheaded the LAA Commissioning Framework project.

Lambeth Supporting People team have also been key players in the development of Communities and Local Government's National Outcomes Framework. Because of their forward-looking approach, Lambeth has been contacted by numerous other councils and shared its experiences through speeches at conferences.

Lambeth has recognised the key role, for its communities, of the VCS in delivering large parts of Supporting People. To make the most of voluntary organisations, it has developed its commissioning process accordingly. This process has proved successful enough for the LAA to have adopted it as its overall approach to engaging services. There is clearly much to build on, but also a challenge to meet in demonstrating the success of the process more widely.

Contacts

Ann Skinner, Head of Supporting People
The London Borough of Lambeth
telephone: (020) 7926 4552
email: ann.skinner@lambeth.gov.uk
Jack Shieh, Director
Vietnamese Mental Health Service
telephone: (020) 7639 2288
email: vietnamesemhs@aol.com

Case study provided by IDeA