A case study of a council and place that scores higher in this aspect
Unlocking potential is the heart of our strategic commissioning approach. We have invested significantly in community development, shifted several large contracts over time from large commercial national providers to small local providers (leading to more money recycled in the local economy, more quickly, making a real impact on people on the edge of poverty). Adult wellness – building from our Ageing Better programme – is a core service and part of a joined-up, place-based strategy (mostly led by the council, but we’re working on it!) which links with lifelong learning, town centre generation, and access to good work to try to deal with poverty, low skills, and low productivity largely due to ill health. Our community connection activities are also linked to social prescribing and remuneration for co-production work, governance roles, and consultation.
We now routinely commission with a mix of grants, contracts, and mixed models, offering long-term funding where possible, covering overheads, seeking minimal or no bid costs where possible (this has proved much harder to do for NHS spend given the regulations). Alliance contracting has proved helpful for this. Where we do traditional contracting, we have strong social value commitments – and, more importantly, contractual commitments – to social outcomes, co-production, quality of employment, and joining our provider collaborative to look at workforce development (and recruitment and retention) as a whole place. We also have a commitment to map existing assets and delivery servicing before bringing in new contracts, and to have a market development plan which shows how each contract will leave our provider markets healthier.
All of this has been really difficult, and we could not have achieved it without staunch support from senior leaders and politicians, and without linking to their priorities for the council and place as a whole. It helped to have money to invest. Many commercial providers have also been very positive, particularly about freedom to innovate during service delivery.
A case study of a council and place that scores lower in this aspect
We have had to cut our grants to the voluntary sector and use social prescribing and asset-based approaches as ways of mitigating service savings, as funding has reduced and thresholds for access have increased. We are currently reviewing our information, advice, and guidance contract and hope to make cuts and award to a single provider (with sub-contractors) to be able to manage the relationship better and demonstrate better value for money. We have introduced standard social value clauses and a requirement for local investment and a proportion of local sub-contracting. We commission a lot of capability building and support services, but usually small scale and not joined up.
Equality and equity considerations with this aspect
It is important to take a critical perspective regarding the impact of deprivation, exclusion, and intersectional factors on the capability of people to provide their own support, and not make assumptions about this capability. Additionally, some people who are otherwise in highly privileged groups will not necessarily be privileged (in terms, for example, of close and engaged social networks) when it comes to their ability to be supported in their home and community. At the same time, traditional service provision is likely to be biased and have built-in assumptions about needs and how they should be met, which will impact different groups in different ways. The same suspension of assumption and genuine exploration needs to apply to groups and organisations providing support, which may have very different perspectives, strengths, and weaknesses depending on their context.